Remote data mirroring

• US 6,173,377 B1
• Filed: 04/17/1998
• Issued: 01/09/2001
• Est. Priority Date: 04/23/1993
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: EMC Corporation (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Original Assignee: EMC Corporation (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Inventors: Shklarsky, Gadi G, Castel, Daniel D. C, Vishlitzky, Natan, Ofek, Yuval, Alterescu, Bruno, Yanai, Moshe
• Primary Examiner(s): Thai, Tuan V.
• Application Number:
  US09/061,708
• Time in Patent Office: 998 Days
• Field of Search: 711/154, 711/156, 711/161, 711/162, 711/165, 714/6, 714/5
• US Class Current: 711/162
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2066 Optimisation of the communication load
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2071 using a plurality of controllers
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2074 Asynchronous techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2079 Bidirectional techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2082 Data synchronisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2003/0697 device management, e.g. handlers, drivers, I/O schedulers
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0601 Interfaces specially adapted for storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0608 Saving storage space on storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/061 Improving I/O performance
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0619 in relation to data integrity, e.g. data losses, bit errors
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/064 Management of blocks
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/065 Replication mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0661 Format or protocol conversion arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0689 Disk arrays, e.g. RAID, JBOD
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 20/1217 on discs
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1095 Replication or mirroring of data, e.g. scheduling or transport for data synchronisation between network nodes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/26 Special purpose or proprietary protocols or architectures network applications for proprietary or special purpose networking environments H04L67/12
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/40 for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity, e.g. service redundancy protocols, protocol state redundancy or protocol service redirection management of faults, events, alarms or notifications in data switching networks H04L41/06
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99942 Manipulating data structure, e.g. compression, compaction, compilation

Abstract

Two data storage systems are interconnected by a data link for remote mirroring of data. Each volume of data is configured as local, primary in a remotely mirrored volume pair, or secondary in a remotely mirrored volume pair. Normally, a host computer directly accesses either a local or a primary volume, and data written to a primary volume is automatically sent over the link to a corresponding secondary volume. Each remotely mirrored volume pair can operate in a selected synchronization mode including synchronous, semi-synchronous, adaptive copy-remote write pending, and adaptive copy-disk. Direct write access to a secondary volume is denied if a “sync required” attribute is set for the volume and the volume is not synchronized. If a “volume domino” mode is enabled for a remotely mirrored volume pair, access to a volume of the pair is denied when the other volume is inaccessible. In a “links domino” mode, access to all remotely mirrored volumes is denied when remote mirroring is disrupted by an all-links failure. The domino modes can be used to initiate application-based recovery, for example, recovering a secondary data file using a secondary log file. In an active migration mode, host processing of a primary volume is concurrent with migration to a secondary volume. In an overwrite cache mode, remote write-pending data in cache can be overwritten. Write data for an entire host channel command word chain is bundled in one link transmission.

Claims

1. A data storage system for providing remote data copying, said data storage system comprising:

a first data storage subsystem including first data storage, and

a second data storage subsystem including second data storage, the second data storage subsystem being at a location remote from the first data storage subsystem, and

at least one data link between the first data storage subsystem and the second data storage subsystem for transmission of remote copy data from the first data storage subsystem to the second data storage subsystem, and for transmission of remote copy data from the second data storage subsystem to the first data storage subsystem;

wherein the first data storage includes a first set of primary storage locations, and the second data storage includes a first set of secondary storage locations corresponding to the first set of primary storage locations; and

the second data storage includes a second set of primary storage locations, and the first data storage includes a second set of secondary storage locations corresponding to the second set of primary storage locations; and

wherein said first data storage subsystem maintains a first indicator providing an indication of whether a first specified data element stored in said first set of primary data storage locations is valid, a second indicator providing an indication of whether a valid secondary copy of said first specified data element is stored in said first set of secondary data storage locations, a third indicator providing an indication of whether a write is pending of said first specified data element to said first set of primary data storage locations, and at least a fourth indicator providing an indication of whether a write is pending of said first specified data element to said first set of secondary data storage locations, and

wherein said second data storage subsystem maintains a fifth indicator providing an indication of whether a second specified data element stored in said second set of primary data storage locations is valid, a sixth indicator providing an indication of whether a valid secondary copy of said second specified data element is stored in said second set of secondary data storage locations, a seventh indicator providing an indication of whether a write is pending of said second specified data element to said second set of primary data storage locations, and at least an eighth indicator providing an indication of whether a write is pending of said second specified data element to said second set of secondary data storage locations.

2. The data storage system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said first data storage subsystem includes a first cache memory and at least one first disk data storage device, said third indicator provides an indication of whether a write is pending from said first cache memory to said at least one first disk data storage device, and said fourth indicator provides an indication of whether a write is pending from said first data storage subsystem to said second data storage subsystem, and

wherein said second data storage subsystem includes a second cache memory and at least one second disk data storage device, said seventh indicator provides an indication of whether a write is pending from said second cache memory to said at least one second disk data storage device, and said eighth indicator provides an indication of whether a write is pending from said second data storage subsystem to said first data storage subsystem.

3. The system as claimed in claim 2, wherein said first data storage subsystem maintains a first count of a number of data storage elements which are invalid in said first set of secondary data storage locations in said second data storage subsystem, and said first data storage subsystem transmits to said second data storage subsystem said first count of said number of data storage elements which are invalid in said first set of secondary data storage locations in said second data storage subsystem, and

wherein said second data storage subsystem maintains a second count of a number of data storage elements which are invalid in said second set of secondary data storage locations in said first data storage subsystem, and said second data storage subsystem transmits to said first data storage subsystem said second count of said number of data storage elements which are invalid in said second set of secondary data storage locations in said first data storage subsystem.

4. A system for automatically providing remote copy storage of data from a host computer, said system comprising:

a first data storage system for coupling to the host computer for storing data from the host computer; and

a second data storage system remotely coupled to the first data storage system for receiving a copy of the data from the first data storage system;

wherein the first data storage system is programmed to selectively operate in at least two modes, including;

a real-time mode wherein the first data storage system and the second data storage system guarantee that in response to receipt of the data from the host computer, a primary copy of the data from the host computer is stored in primary data storage in the first data storage system and a secondary copy of the data from the host computer is stored in the secondary data storage in the second data storage system before an input/output completion signal for the data is returned to the host computer; and

an asynchronous mode wherein the data from the host computer is copied from the first data storage system to the second data storage system asynchronously from the time when the first data storage system returns an input/output completion signal for the data to the host computer.

5. The system as claimed in claim 4, wherein for the asynchronous mode, the first data storage system maintains a log file of pending remote-copy data which has yet to be written from the first data storage system to storage in the second data storage system, and information as to the time of the last remote-copy operation so that the remote-copy data may be later synchronized should an error be detected.

6. The system as claimed in claim 5, wherein the first data storage system maintains a time stamp in association with the remote-copy data.

7. The system as claimed in claim 4, wherein the first data storage system includes a processor for periodically scanning for remote write-pending indicator bits and invoking a copy task which copies data from primary storage in the first data storage system to secondary storage in the second data storage system.

8. The system as claimed in claim 4, wherein the first data storage system includes a processor for performing a background task of checking invalid track bits for data storage devices and if an invalid track bit is found to indicate an invalid track, a copy task is invoked to copy data from a known good storage device to the storage device having the invalid track.

9. The system as claimed in claim 4, wherein the first data storage system transmits the data from the host computer to secondary storage in the second data storage system together with an indication that a primary storage device in the first data storage system is not available when the primary storage device in the first data storage system is not available for storing the data from the host computer, and as soon as the primary storage device in the first data storage system becomes available, then automatically, as a background operation, the first data storage system resynchronizes the primary storage device with the secondary storage in the second data storage system.

10. The system as claimed in claim 9, wherein the first data storage system alerts a user when the background operation cannot resynchronize the primary storage device with the secondary storage in the second data storage system due to invalidity of data in both the primary storage device and in the secondary storage in the second data storage system.

11. The system as claimed in claim 4, wherein the first data storage system stores the data from the host computer to primary storage in the first data storage system when a secondary storage device in the second data storage system is not available to store a remote copy of the data from the host computer, and as soon as the secondary storage device becomes available, then automatically, as a background operation, the first data storage system resynchronizes the secondary storage device with the primary storage in the first data storage system.

12. The system as claimed in claim 11, wherein the first data storage system alerts a user when the background operation cannot resynchronize the secondary storage device with the primary storage in the first data storage system due to invalidity of data storage in both the secondary storage device and in the primary storage in the first data storage system.