Patent ID: 6851020
Filing Date: 2005-02-01
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A disk controller for use in a network environment composed of one or more host computers and one or more disk controllers, each of said disk controllers controlling storage media according to an instruction from the host computers, each of said disk controllers comprising: a plurality of controllers each having at least one port for controlling a bus protocol between the host computers and a storage system including said disk controllers; and a cache mechanism for temporarily storing data from the host computers, wherein said at least one port executes a request from the host computers and in a time sharing manner, transfers data to be stored on the storage media to other disk controllers, and wherein, when said disk controller has a plurality of ports and all of the ports are being used for online processing, said disk controller selects a port with a light online processing load from the plurality of ports in response to a backup instruction from the host and executes backup processing via the port.