Patent ID: 7398421

Claim:
A system comprising: a plurality of hosts; a plurality of storage devices; and a storage area network switch comprising: a plurality of ports, wherein each of said plurality of hosts is coupled to a respective host one of said plurality of ports, and wherein each of said plurality of storage devices is coupled to a respective storage one of said plurality of ports; virtualization logic configured to map two or more of said storage devices as a volume presented to one or more of said hosts via said respective host ports, wherein said volume comprises a plurality of data blocks; an input/output (I/O) tracking mechanism configured to store information about write operations in progress at each of said plurality of ports; wherein in response to a failure of a given one of said plurality of ports occurring while one or more write operations to said volume received via one or more of said respective host ports are in progress, said storage area network switch is configured to initiate consistency recovery of said volume using said stored information about write operations in progress at said given port.