Patent ID: 8230435

Claim:
A method, comprising: maintaining an association of processing system identifiers with resources, including a first and second resources; receiving a request from a requesting processing system in a host for use of the first resource that provides access to the second resource, wherein the request is generated by processing system software and wherein the request further includes a submitted processing system identifier included in the request by host hardware in the host, wherein the received request is associated with a submitted path group identifier provided by the requesting processing system software; maintaining an association of path group identifiers with resources, wherein the path group identifiers, identifying path groups, are associated with resources such that processing systems associated with one path group identifier are provided access to the resources associated with that path group identifier over paths included in the path group; determining whether the path group identifier associated with the request matches the path group identifier associated with the first and second resources; determining whether the submitted processing system identifier is one of the processing system identifiers associated with the first and second resources in response to determining that the path group identifier associated with the request matches the path group identifier associated with the requested first and second resources; and providing the requesting processing system access to the first resource that the requesting processing system uses to access the second resource in response to determining that the submitted processing system identifier is one of the processing system identifiers associated with the first and second resources.