Patent ID: 7945730

Claim:
A method for recovering from mismatching configuration data in a clustered environment having a plurality of storage devices coupled to a plurality of storage controllers, wherein one of the storage controllers is an active controller and one or more other storage controllers are passive controllers, wherein the active controller maintains configuration data, the method comprising: detecting, by operation of the passive controller, that the active controller has failed; determining, by operation of the passive controller, that a first storage device of the plurality of storage devices has first configuration data that does not match second configuration data of a second storage device of the plurality of storage devices; comparing, by operation of the passive controller, relevant attributes of the first and second configuration data to determine whether a relevant difference is a physical status of at least one of the plurality of storage devices and to determine that the mismatch comprises only attributes relating to configuration that cannot cause data corruption; and automatically resolving, by operation of the passive controller, the mismatch between the first and second configuration data to recover from the mismatched configuration data if the relevant difference is the physical status of at least one of the plurality of storage devices and the mismatch comprises only attributes relating to configuration that cannot cause data corruption, wherein the resolving step further comprises: comparing sequence numbers of the first and second configuration data to determine which of the first and second configuration data is more recent; using the physical status of the more recent of the first and second configuration data to generate correct configuration data for the plurality of storage devices.