Patent ID: 8711684

Claim:
A method for detecting an intermittent path to a storage system comprising: accessing path statistics comprising indicia of path state of a path to a storage system wherein the indicia comprise at least one of start and end times for an input/output request, a last time of path failure, a number of failed input/output requests on the path, or a failure counter value; detecting whether the path is an intermittent path by determining whether the path state has changed during a predefined period by performing an analysis on the path statistics, and identifying the path as an intermittent path, in response to the path state having changed at least a predefined number of times during the predefined period; aging the path by determining whether the path is operational by probing the path periodically, and marking the path as recovered, after a threshold number of consecutive probes indicate the path is operational; upon the path being marked as recovered, repeating the detecting; if the detecting indicates that the path is still intermittent, repeating the aging and the detecting, until the path is no longer intermittent; and restoring the path only after the path is determined to be no longer intermittent.