Emc Corporation

Daniel D C Castel

Natan Vishlitzky

Moshe Yanai

Bruno Alterescu

Gadi G Shklarsky

Yuval Ofek

A primary data storage system is linked to a geographically remote secondary data storage system for automatically maintaining a remote copy of the data in the primary storage. The primary data storage system has a primary cache memory, and the secondary data storage system has a secondary cache memory. The primary data storage system controller has a first remote link adapter coupled between the primary cache memory and the communications link for transferring the data to the communications link. The secondary data storage system controller has a second remote link adapter coupled between the communications link and the secondary cache memory for transferring the data from the communications link to the secondary cache memory. In this fashion, the first remote link adapter and the second remote link adapter automatically transfer the data to the secondary cache memory for writing of the data into the secondary data storage.

Remote data mirroring system having a remote link adapter

A primary data storage system is linked to a geographically remote secondary data storage system for automatically maintaining a remote copy of the data in the primary storage. The primary data storage system controller uses write pending indicators to control and coordinate the remote copy process. In response to receipt of data from the host computer, a first write pending indicator is set to write the data into at least one primary data storage device, and a second write pending indicator is set to copy the data to the secondary data storage system controller. The first write pending indicator is reset after the data is written to the primary data storage device, and the second write pending indicator is reset after receiving an acknowledgement back from the secondary data storage system controller.

Remote data mirroring system using local and remote write pending indicators

A primary data storage system is linked to a geographically remote secondary data storage system for automatically maintaining a remote copy of the data in the primary storage. Each of the data storage systems has at least one data storage device, a cache memory, a data storage system controller, and a service processor for servicing the data storage system. The primary and secondary service processors are linked to permit remote system configuration and remote software programming of the secondary data storage system, and to exchange a report of all the non-valid, out of sync tracks. The service processors can also perform the task of scanning for remote write pending bits to invoke the remote copy task, and checking for invalid track bits to invoke a task for copying data from a known good storage device to the device with the invalid track bit set.

Remote data mirroring system having a service processor

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 &ldquo;sync required&rdquo; attribute is set for the volume and the volume is not synchronized. If a &ldquo;volume domino&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;links domino&rdquo; 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.

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Boston, MA, United States of America

Daniel D C Castel