Patent ID: 7089448

Claim:
A disk mirroring apparatus comprising two or more processing assemblies each processing assembly further comprising: A processing unit, further comprising one or more general purpose processors, a memory, one or more disk controllers and a network interface; and A disk coupled to the processing unit, the storage of the disk being logically divided into at least two data segments, wherein a first data segment of a first disk in a first processing assembly is mirrored by a secondary data segment of a second disk in a second processing assembly; and wherein the disk mirror apparatus further comprises: a spare processing assembly, activated by a system manager upon detecting failure of the disk or the processing unit of one of the plurality of processing assemblies; and wherein the system manager creates the spare processing assembly by redistributing data stored on the disk of a first processing assembly among the disks of a subset of the plurality of processing assemblies, not including the first processing assembly after which the first processing assembly can serve as the spare processing assembly.