Patent ID: 7917711
Filing Date: 2011-03-29
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. An apparatus for automatically selecting a copy function, the apparatus comprising: an identification module configured to identify one or more available copy functions in response to a data copy request to copy data to a secondary storage device, the identification module identifying each identified copy function by determining that the copy function is available to an application to copy data of the data copy request to the secondary storage device, the secondary storage device comprising one of one or more secondary storage devices available to the application for storing the data; a comparison module configured to compare copy function attributes of each identified copy function to corresponding copy policy objectives of a predefined copy policy, wherein the copy policy comprises a set of copy policy objectives that correspond to the copy function attributes of each copy function, the copy policy objectives comprising at least two of a recovery point objective, a recovery time objective, a location, a consistency, and an application impact; a selection module configured to automatically select a copy function that satisfies the predefined copy policy based on the comparison of the copy function attributes to the corresponding objectives of the copy policy; and a relationship module configured to establish a copy relationship between the selected copy function and the data copy request, the copy relationship configured to use the selected copy function to copy the requested data to a secondary storage device, wherein the identification module, the comparison module, the selection module, and the relationship module comprise at least one of hardware and executable code, the executable code executable on a processor and stored on one or more computer readable media; wherein the comparison module is further configured to calculate a difference between at least two of the copy function attributes, each configured as a numerical value, and corresponding predefined copy policy objectives for each of the available copy functions, to multiply each difference by a priority factor to obtain an adjusted difference, to sum the adjusted differences for each copy function, and the selection module is further configured to select a copy function with a lowest sum of adjusted differences.