Patent ID: 7657578

Claim:
A system comprising: a first and a second set of one or more physical block devices; a first and a second volume server; one or more volume clients; and a replication manager, wherein the first volume server is configured to: aggregate storage in the first set of one or more physical block devices into one or more logical volumes including at least a mirrored volume comprising a plurality of mirrors, and make the one or more logical volumes accessible to the one or more volume clients; wherein the replication manager is configured to operate in cooperation with the first and second volume servers and the one or more volume clients to maintain a replica of at least a subset of the one or more logical volumes at the second set of one or more physical block devices; wherein to maintain a replica of the mirrored volume, the replication manager is further configured to: remove a first one of the mirrors from the mirrored volume, such that subsequent to removal of the first mirror, data updates to the mirrored volume are not stored to the first mirror; and subsequent to removal of the first mirror, synchronize contents of the first mirror to a second logical volume at the second set of one or more physical block devices.