Patent ID: 8775549

Claim:
A method for automatically adjusting a replication rate in a data storage system, the method comprising: providing a data replication process that replicates data stored by the data storage system; providing for the specification of a quality of service (QoS) level associated with the performance of at least one non-replication application operating on a data storage system, wherein the at least one non-replication application and the data replication process access shared resources of the data storage system; determining a performance measure of the at least one non-replication application, wherein determining a performance measure of the at least one non-replication application includes measuring an access time for input/output (I/O) requests associated with the at least one non-replication application by examining packets traversing a communications link between the at least one non-replication application and a data storage device; determining a data replication rate of the data storage system available to the data replication process; and automatically adjusting the data replication rate based on the QoS level and the performance measure of the at least one non-replication application, wherein automatically adjusting the data replication rate includes adjusting the speed at which data is copied by the data replication process from a source to a destination based on the QoS level of the at least one non-replication application and the measured access time for the I/O requests of the at least one non-replication application, wherein automatically adjusting the data replication rate includes, in response to a determination that the QoS level of the at least one non-replication application is being satisfied, sending a speed-up message from a QoS manager to a replication manager and wherein, in response to receiving the speed-up message, the replication manager increases a number of replication threads from a default number greater than zero to a second number higher than the default number and wherein automatically adjusting the data replication rate includes maintaining a performance parameter adjustment priority list containing a plurality of performance parameters associated with a plurality of priority values and adjusting performance parameters based on the priority values in the list.