Patent ID: 9569314
Date: 2017-02-14
CPC Classifications: G06F

Claim:
1. A method for disaster recovery (DR) testing, the method comprising: creating a snapshot of data based on a backup copy of data stored on one or more production clusters or a live copy of the data; storing the snapshot on more than one DR cluster within a DR family; determining which cluster within the DR family to access the snapshot from based on a consistency of the snapshot in relation to data on the one or more production clusters at a time-zero; accessing the snapshot of data stored on the determined DR cluster within the DR family only when the snapshot was made consistent with respect to data on the one or more production clusters within the DR family before the time-zero; performing DR testing using the snapshot; defining and managing unique, independent ownerships of the backup copy, an active virtual tape from which data for the backup copy was copied, and the snapshot; and allowing a DR host to mount a first virtual tape having a first identifier that comprises the backup copy and/or a second virtual tape having the first identifier that comprises the snapshot simultaneously with a production host mounting a third virtual tape having the first identifier that comprises the data stored to the one or more production clusters, wherein the time-zero represents a time selected to simulate a disaster, the DR family comprises one or more DR clusters accessible to the DR host and the one or more production clusters accessible to the production host, each DR cluster comprises one or more storage nodes representing a storage device, and the DR host is configured to replicate data from the one or more production clusters to the one or more DR clusters.