System and method for providing efficient redundancy mirroring communications in an n-way scalable network storage system

摘要

A networked storage system controller architecture is capable of n-way distributed data redundancy using dynamically first-time allocated mirrored caches. Each storage controller has a cache mirror partition that may be used to mirror data in any other storage controller's dirty cache. As a storage controller receives a write request for a given volume it determines the owning storage controller for that volume. If another storage controller owns the volume requested, the receiving storage controller forwards the request to the owning storage controller. If no mirror has been previously established, the forwarding storage controller becomes the mirror. Thus, as data is received from the host, the receiving storage controller stores the data into its mirrored cache partition and copies the data to the owning storage controller.