Appeal 2007-1779
Application 10/447,351
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants have invented a method and apparatus for providing
control on metadata within a network of storage controllers. One of the
storage controllers is designated as an owner storage controller, and the
remainder of the storage controllers is designated as client storage
controllers. The owner storage controller owns metadata controlling all
input/output (I/O) operations associated with a region of storage. In
response to an I/O request to one of the client storage controllers, the owner
storage controller suspends the I/O request, and determines whether or not
the region of storage has already been copied. If the region of storage has
been copied, then the owner storage controller unpends the I/O request
for processing by the client storage controller. If the region of storage has
not been copied, then the owner storage controller places a lock against the
metadata associated with the region of storage, copies data within the region
of storage, and releases the lock record to process the I/O request
(Specification 6, 9, and 19).
Claim 5 is representative of the claims on appeal, and it reads as
follows:
5. A method for providing control on metadata within a network of
storage controllers, said method comprising:
designating one of said storage controllers as an owner storage
controller, wherein said owner storage controller owns metadata controlling
all input/output (I/O) operations associated with a region of storage;
designating remaining of said storage controllers as client storage
controllers;
2
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