Patent ID: 8818962

Claim:
A method of detecting a data inconsistency in a point-in-time copy of data, comprising: receiving event information from systems and applications associated with a plurality of point-in-time copies of data, each of said copies being a data image of a storage volume's state at a particular time; correlating events from the event information with at least one said copies; determining that at least event is associated with a data inconsistency, said determining being based on a probability that there is a data inconsistency with the occurrence of a particular event where the probability is based on an association of the particular event with a previously encountered data inconsistency; and determining that at least one event is associated with a data inconsistency, including: identifying, at least one of said copies correlated with an event determined to be associated with a data inconsistency as a candidate point-in-time copy of data, for testing for a data inconsistency; selecting, particular tests for testing said candidate to determine whether said candidate has a data inconsistency, the selecting being based on a correlation between the event associated with the data inconsistency and a probability that each of the tests will detect the data inconsistency; scheduling testing of said candidate using said tests, the scheduling includes prioritizing each of the selected tests based on an estimated run time; testing said candidate with at least one of the tests selected to determine if said candidate has a data inconsistency; determining that the testing results with at least one data inconsistency, and correcting the at least one inconsistency and providing the corrected point-in-time copy of data; monitoring performance of the tests and a production application associated with said point-in-time copy of data; and if performance of the production application is below a pre-determined threshold, throttling the tests to reduce performance impact on the production application.