Patent ID: 7165157

Claim:
A storage subsystem coupled to a computer, comprising: a logical storage device to which an I/O process is performed by the computer; a determination unit which determines whether an access to said logical storage device is permitted or not, in accordance with a data copy instruction from the computer for a data copy process relative to said logical storage device by an extended copy; and a data copy processing unit responsive to the data copy instruction from the computer which data copy processing unit performs the data copy process relative to said logical storage device without involving the computer, in accordance with a determination result by said determination unit, wherein in response to the data copy instruction from the computer, said determination unit determines whether an access to a copy source logical storage device and an access to a copy destination logical storage device among said logical storage device and another logical storage device are permitted or not, from a correspondence between identification information of the computer and identification information of the copy source logical storage device, and between the identification information of the computer and identification information of the copy destination logical storage device based on information of said copy source logical storage device and said copy destination logical storage device in the data copy instruction; if said determination unit determines that accesses to the copy source logical storage device and the copy destination logical storage device are permitted, said data copy processing unit performs the data copy process of copying copy target data in the copy source logical storage device to the copy destination logical storage device without involving the computer, in response to the data copy instruction from the computer; and the another logical storage device is a logical storage device of the storage subsystem, an external logical storage device coupled to the storage subsystem, or a logical storage device of another storage subsystem coupled to the storage subsystem.