Patent ID: 8077605

Claim:
A method for providing path failover while combining multiple Serial Attached Small Computer System Interface (SAS) expanders to act as a single, cohesive SAS expander, comprising: assigning an identical SAS address to at least a first SAS expander and a second SAS expander; detecting a failed link between the first SAS expander and a device due to at least one of a physical or logical problem; and re-routing a data transfer of the first SAS expander connected to the device via the failed link to the second SAS expander, where the second SAS expander is connected to the device via a functional link, wherein the first SAS expander is connected to the second SAS expander via phys of the first SAS expander and phys of the second SAS expander for inter-expander communications, wherein the re-routing a data transfer of the first SAS expander connected to the device via the failed link to a second SAS expander connected to the device via a functional link, wherein the first SAS expander is connected to the SAS expander via the phys of the first SAS expander and the phys of the second SAS expander for inter-expander communications further includes: reprogramming a route table of the first SAS expander to re-route the data transfer from the failed link to links between the phys of the first SAS expander for inter-expander communications and the phys of the second SAS expander for inter-expander communications.