Patent ID: 9729629
Date: 2017-08-08
CPC Classifications: G06F,H04L

Claim:
1. A computer-implemented method, carried out by one or more processors, for sharing bandwidth in an asynchronous data replication system having multiple storage control sessions, the method comprising the steps of: establishing a plurality of storage control sessions, wherein each storage control session associates at least one primary storage controller and at least one secondary storage controller with a predetermined path through a data transport network that interconnects the primary and secondary storage controllers; identifying storage control sessions that have data available to be transferred from primary storage controllers to secondary storage controllers; sharing available data for each session via a coupling structure; determining common nodes each control session should utilize to reach a same transfer time in a balanced manner based on the shared available data, wherein the shared available data for each control session includes a quantity of data that needs to be transferred from respectively associated primary storage controllers to respectively associated secondary storage controllers; determining the transfer time through the network for each data element to estimate prospective bandwidth utilization based on the determined common nodes; determining, for a predetermined time interval, whether transferring the available data would fully occupy available bandwidth of the data transport network for the predetermined time interval based on the shared data available data for each session; and when available bandwidth would be fully occupied, transferring the available data accumulated during predetermined time intervals prior to the predetermined time interval in which fully occupied bandwidth was detected.