A multipathing path selection policy that sticks with the path currently in use and does not switch back when the preferred path recovers. In vSphere it is an NMP policy and the default for most active-passive storage arrays.
Also called Most Recently Used.
Read more: Broadcom TechDocs
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains MRU in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- PATH
Parent-child hierarchies in DAX rely on this function. For each row it builds one delimited text value listing the IDs of the row's ancestors, top level first and ending with the row's own ID, which PATHITEM, PATHLENGTH and friends can then pick apart.
- Exclusions
Scopes taken out of a policy assignment; they can only narrow its coverage, never widen it.
- SWITCH
Checks one expression against several candidate values, returning whichever result pairs with the match (or a fallback otherwise). Writing SWITCH ( TRUE (), ... ) avoids nested IF chains: whichever condition is first true wins.
- vSphere
VMware's platform for virtualisation, made up of vCenter and ESX hosts, supplying compute for VCF clusters.
- NMP
Handles failover and path choice for SCSI storage through two kinds of submodule, SATP and PSP, and is VMware's default multipathing module. For NVMe devices, HPP is used instead.
- General-purpose v1
The older storage account kind (
Storage), which lacks access tiers, Archive and premium file shares and retires on 13 October 2026. Converting to ZRS requires first upgrading to GPv2, a one-way change.
Related terms
- PSP
Decides, for every I/O sent to a storage device, which physical path it travels down, using policies like Round Robin, Fixed or Most Recently Used. It is one of the two submodules of NMP.