Method and apparatus for the takeover of primary volume in multiple volume mirroring
First Claim
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1. A disk system comprising:
- plural input-output (I/O) ports;
plural disk groups, each disk group configured as a redundant array, each disk group being arranged into one or more logical volumes, each logical volume comprising at least two disk drive units, a first of said logical volumes being a primary volume and one or more others of said logical volumes being secondary volumes; and
a disk controller operatively coupled to each of said I/O ports to receive I/O requests from one or more host systems, said disk controller configured to write data to said primary volume and to one or more of said secondary volumes to satisfy said I/O requests, wherein data that is written to said primary volume is mirrored to said one or more of said secondary volumes, said disk controller being operable to select one of said secondary volumes in an available disk group as a replacement volume of said primary volume when at least one disk group in said primary volume becomes unavailable.
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Abstract
A multiple disk system comprises plural physical drives organized as plural groups of disks. Each group is accessed as a plurality of logical volumes. One of the logical drives is considered a primary volume and one or more other logical volumes are considered as secondary volumes, which together constitute a mirroring group. Data contained in a memory records such organization. The data is consulted to select a secondary volume when the disk group containing a primary volume fails.
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Citations
20 Claims
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1. A disk system comprising:
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plural input-output (I/O) ports;
plural disk groups, each disk group configured as a redundant array, each disk group being arranged into one or more logical volumes, each logical volume comprising at least two disk drive units, a first of said logical volumes being a primary volume and one or more others of said logical volumes being secondary volumes; and
a disk controller operatively coupled to each of said I/O ports to receive I/O requests from one or more host systems, said disk controller configured to write data to said primary volume and to one or more of said secondary volumes to satisfy said I/O requests, wherein data that is written to said primary volume is mirrored to said one or more of said secondary volumes, said disk controller being operable to select one of said secondary volumes in an available disk group as a replacement volume of said primary volume when at least one disk group in said primary volume becomes unavailable. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5)
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6. A disk system comprising:
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a plurality of input/output (I/O) ports;
a data processing unit in data communication with said I/O ports;
a first disk group and a second disk group, each of which is configured as a redundant array of disk drives, said redundant array of disk drives of said first disk group including a first volume, said redundant array of disk drives of said second disk groups including a second volume; and
a first memory configured to contain first program code executable by said data processing unit to write data to said first volume and to said second volume such that data written to said first volume is mirrored in said second volume. - View Dependent Claims (7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
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12. A method for data access comprising:
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grouping a plurality of disk drives into at least two disk groups, at least one disk group comprising disk drives configured as a redundant array;
organizing each disk group into one or more logical volumes, each said one or more logical volumes comprising two or more disk drives of one of said disk groups, a first logical volume among said disk groups being a primary volume, others of said one or more logical volumes being one or more secondary volumes, wherein data written to said primary volume is also written to said secondary volumes such that data in said primary volume is mirrored in said secondary volumes; and
if said primary volume becomes unavailable, then designating one of said secondary volumes as a failover primary volume, including identifying said disk group to which said primary volume belongs and eliminating secondary volumes located on said disk group as candidates for said failover primary volume, wherein data is subsequently written to said failover primary volume. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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Specification