Avoiding A Ping-Pong Effect On Active-Passive Storage

• Main Authors: PULAVARTY BADARI, BHATTIPROLU SUKADEV, SEETHARAMAN CHANDRA S, MYNENI HAREN, SHAROFF NARASIMHA N, NAINENI MALAHAL R, JUJJURI VENKATESWARARAO
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 13.06.2013
• Subjects: CALCULATING; COMPUTING; COUNTING; ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING; PHYSICS

A technique for avoiding a ping-pong effect on active-passive paths in a storage system managing one or more logical storage units (LUNs) on behalf of one or more host systems. A first path to the LUNs is designated as an active path and a second path to the LUNs is designated as a passive path. The first path is also designated as a preferred path to the LUNs. In response to a path failure in which a host system cannot access the LUNs on the first path, a failover operation is implemented wherein the second path is designated as the active path and the first path is designated as the passive path. The designation of the first path as the preferred path to the LUNs is not changed. Subsequent failback operations are conditionally inhibited so that only the failover host that initiated the failover is permitted to initiate a failback.