Patent ID: 8806509

Claim:
A method comprising the steps of: generating, at a storage controller, an exception event and associated exception data; indicating the exception event in a status page of the storage controller, wherein the status page is a section of memory in the storage controller that is accessible by multiple storage servers including a first storage server, wherein the first storage server is a network storage server that provides storage access services to network storage clients; attempting to register the first storage server with the storage controller by attempting to write a unique token from the first storage server to the status page of the storage controller, wherein one storage server is registered with the storage controller at a time; determining whether another storage server is already registered with the storage controller by determining whether a token from the other storage server is already written in the status page of the storage controller; denying registration of the first storage server if the other storage server is already registered with the storage controller; allowing registration of the first storage server if no storage server is registered with the storage controller; and only if the first storage server is registered with the storage controller, then allowing reading the exception data by the first storage server from the storage controller.