Granted Patent B1

US 7,281,081 · App. 11/184,587 · Granted Oct 9, 2007

Abstract

Claims (39)

1. A system for protecting a destination block in a storage device from being overwritten, the system comprising:

a data mover operable to perform a data mover operation involving the destination block; and

a controller coupled to the data mover, the controller operable to:

detect an application write request to the destination block;

send a request to the data mover to terminate the data mover operation in response to detection of the application write request to the destination block; and

stall the application write request until the data mover operation is terminated.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the data mover is disposed in a disk array comprising the storage device.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the controller is disposed in a disk array comprising the storage device.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein the controller is operable to complete the application write request upon a termination of the data mover operation.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein the data mover provides an extent list including the destination block to the controller.

6. A method comprising:

initiating a data mover operation involving a destination block in a storage device;

detecting an application write request to the destination block;

requesting a termination of the data mover operation in response to detecting the application write request to the destination block; and

stalling the application write request until the data mover operation is terminated.

7. The method of claim 6 , further comprising:

completing the application write request upon the termination of the data mover operation.

8. The method of claim 6 , further comprising:

generating an extent list comprising at least the destination block; and

verifying the extent list prior to initiating the data mover operation.

9. The method of claim 6 wherein the data mover operation is performed by a data mover.

10. The method of claim 6 wherein the data mover operation comprises a third-party copy operation.

11. A computer-readable storage medium comprising program instructions, wherein the program instructions are executable to implement:

initiating a data mover operation involving a destination block in a storage device;

detecting an application write request to the destination block;

requesting a termination of the data mover operation in response to detecting the application write request to the destination block; and

stalling the application write request until the data mover operation is terminated.

12. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11 , wherein the program instructions are further executable to implement:

completing the application write request upon the termination of the data mover operation.

13. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11 , wherein the program instructions are further executable to implement:

generating an extent list comprising at least the destination block; and

verifying the extent list prior to initiating the data mover operation.

14. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the data mover operation is performed by a data mover.

15. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the data mover operation comprises a third-party copy operation.

16. A system comprising:

means for initiating a data mover operation involving a destination block in a storage device;

means for detecting an application write request to the destination block;

means for requesting a termination of the data mover operation in response to detecting the application write request to the destination block; and

means for stalling the application write request until the data mover operation is terminated.

Assignments (15)