Patent ID: 8806268
Filing Date: 2014-08-12
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method, comprising: maintaining a primary storage controller in a copy relationship with a secondary storage controller, wherein the primary and secondary storage controllers are coupled to a host that is configurable to use the secondary storage controller instead of the primary storage controller; determining, by the primary storage controller, occurrence of at least one condition in the primary storage controller, wherein the at least one condition occurs prior to a failure of the host to perform an Input/Output (I/O) operation with respect to at least one storage volume of the primary storage controller, and wherein subsequent to the occurrence of the at least one condition but prior to the failure of the host to perform the I/O operation, the host performs other I/O operations with respect to the at least one storage volume of the primary storage controller; and communicating, by the primary storage controller, the occurrence of the at least one condition to the host to provide an indication of a possibility of potential error at a future point in time, wherein in response to the communicating the host is configured to determine whether to use the secondary storage controller instead of the primary storage controller based on the occurrence of the at least one condition, wherein the determining of the occurrence of the at least one condition and the communicating of the occurrence of the at least one condition to the host, are performed in response to the primary storage controller determining that the host has capability to substitute usage of the primary storage controller with usage of the secondary storage controller, wherein the communicating by the primary storage controller the occurrence of the at least one condition to the host provides an indication that requests a remedial action to an operator, and wherein the host determines whether it is more effective to use the secondary storage controller instead of the primary storage controller in comparison to waiting for the primary storage controller to complete error recovery subsequent to the occurrence of the at least one condition.