Patent ID: 7487269

Claim:
An apparatus to group connection paths for lock attention data, the apparatus comprising: a grouping request module comprising software instructions and data stored on a computer readable storage medium and executing on a processor and configured to receive a request to establish a group of connection paths wherein each connection path is a useable, physical connection path and is configured to communicate the lock attention data between a first host and a control unit and the connection paths in the group of connection paths are used to transmit transaction data when not being used to transmit the lock attention data, the lock attention data comprising a lock notification to the first host when the first host is granted a lock on data stored on hard disk drives and a wait message to the first host that the first host is made a waiter for the data stored on the hard disk drives when a second host is granted the lock, and the control unit is configured to control the hard disk drives containing the data accessible to a plurality of hosts; a connection path selection module comprising software instructions and data stored on the computer readable storage medium and executing on the processor and configured to select a plurality of connection paths between the first host and the control unit; a grouping assignment module comprising software instructions and data stored on the computer readable storage medium and executing on the processor and configured to assign the plurality of connection paths to the group of connection paths until a maximum number of connection paths is reached, create a table that identifies the connection paths of the group of connection paths, and assign a group identification to the group of connection paths; and an attention selection module comprising software instructions and data stored on the computer readable storage medium and executing on the processor and configured to serially poll the connection paths of the group of connection paths and dynamically select an attention connection path from the polled connection paths of the group of connection paths for communicating the lock attention data, wherein in the attention connection path is selected based on amount of traffic, availability, and efficiency.