Patent ID: 9262329
Filing Date: 2016-02-16
CPC Classification: G06F

Claim Text:
1. A method, performed by one or more computing devices, comprising: creating a logical unit number (LUN) on a SAN array; coupling communicatively a host cache to the SAN array, wherein non data network communications between the SAN array and the host cache are used to manage connectivity and coordinate one or more snapshot requests, wherein the non-data network communications comprises a virtual IP address interface; creating a cached LUN at the host cache, wherein the cached LUN represents a caching instance of the LUN across a plurality of servers; preparing a volume of the host cache for creating a first snapshot of the cached LUN, wherein preparing the volume of the host cache is dependent on a mode of the host cache, wherein the mode of the host cache comprises at least one of write-through (WT), write-back (WB), or write-back-write-through (WB-WT) switching, and wherein preparing the volume comprises: flushing a set of data comprising at least one snapshot of the cached LUN when the host cache is in WB or WB-WT switching modes; switching the host cache to WT mode when the host cache is in WB-WT switching mode; and sending a message indicating that the volume is prepared for creating the snapshot of the cached LUN; creating, at the host cache, the first snapshot of the cached LUN; receiving at the host cache a request for data comprising the first snapshot of the cached LUN; sending, by the host cache, the data comprising the first snapshot in response to the request; and in response to completing sending the data comprising the first snapshot, sending, by the host cache, a first response indicating that sending the data comprising the first snapshot is complete.