Patent ID: 7849350

Claim:
A method for responding to a storage processor failure, the method comprising: performing write-back caching operations using a cache of a first storage processor; mirroring data from the cache of the first storage processor to a cache of a second storage processor; and after a failure of the second storage processor in which the second storage processor becomes unavailable, continuing to perform write-back caching operations using the cache of the first storage processor while the second storage processor remains unavailable; wherein current write cache data resides in the cache of the first storage processor after failure of the second storage processor; and wherein the method further comprises: temporarily persisting the current write cache data within the cache of the first storage processor while the first storage processor encounters a software failure and while the second storage processor remains unavailable, and dumping the current write cache data from the cache of the first storage processor to a set of disk drives while the current write cache data temporarily persists within the cache of the first storage processor.