Dell Products Inc.

Dell & Products L.p.

Benjamin Yoder

Arieh Don

Vinay G Rao

Sanjib Mallick

Jeffrey Wilson

Deepika Hegde

Guruprasad Pattar

An apparatus in one embodiment includes at least one processing device comprising a processor coupled to a memory. The at least one processing device is configured to obtain, in a host device, inter-system response time information based at least in part on one or more response times measured by at least one of first and second storage systems relative to another one of the first and second storage systems, and to automatically control, based at least in part on the obtained inter-system response time information, active-standby designations for respective ones of the first and second storage systems. For example, in some embodiments, automatically controlling active-standby designations for respective ones of the first and second storage systems illustratively comprises controlling activation of an active-standby mode of operation based at least in part on comparison of at least a portion of the inter-system response time information to one or more specified thresholds.

Host device configured to control active-standby designations for multiple storage systems using inter-system response times

A disaster recovery storage array automatically generates snapshots of replica storage objects responsive to detection of interruption of asynchronous replication of production storage objects of a primary storage system to the replica storage objects. The primary storage array accumulates updates to the production storage objects over a plurality of asynchronous replication cycles during the interruption. Asynchronous replication automatically resumes when the interruption ends. Accumulation of updates and resumption of asynchronous replication may be performed iteratively if there are multiple interruptions before the replica storage objects are consistent with the production storage objects. The snapshots are automatically discarded after the replica storage objects are made consistent with the production storage objects.

Automated restart of asynchronous remote replication after failures

Unmap extents transmitted in delta sets are used to unmap LBAs on remote replicas of asynchronously replicated storage objects. A host server sends a SCSI unmap command to a production storage array to unmap a range of logical block addresses. In response, the production storage array creates an unmap extent that identifies the local and remote replicas, starting LBA, and number of LBAs to be unmapped. At the end of each asynchronous replication cycle, unmap extents and updated data are sent to a disaster recovery storage array in a delta set that preserves chronological ordering. The disaster recovery storage array receives the delta set and discards cached data corresponding to the unmapped LBAs indicated in the unmap extents and de-allocates the backend storage space. Integrating unmap extents with updated data in delta sets maintains point-in-time consistency and is more efficient than sending zero data.

Unmapping logical block addresses of remote asynchronously replicated volumes

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Chandler, AZ, United States of America

Benjamin Yoder