Patent ID: 7788462

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving a request to write data to a disk pool of a storage hierarchy; wherein the storage hierarchy also includes a tape pool that is lower in the storage hierarchy in comparison to the disk pool, wherein acquisition of hardware resources is required for writing to any defined copy pool, and wherein the hardware resources include at least one of a tape drive, a tape volume, and disk space; acquiring a first set of hardware resources for the disk pool, and acquiring a second set of hardware resources corresponding to a first copy pool that has been defined for the disk pool, in response to receiving the request to write the data to the disk pool; subsequent to acquiring the first and the second set of hardware resources, determining whether the data can be written to the disk pool; in response to determining that the data can be written to the disk pool, performing: writing the data to the disk pool; and writing the data to the first copy pool that has been defined for the disk pool; and in response to determining that the data cannot be written to the disk pool performing: avoiding writing the data to the disk pool, in response to the determining that the data cannot be written to the disk pool; subsequent to avoiding writing the data to the disk pool, acquiring a third set of hardware resources corresponding to the tape pool of the storage hierarchy while retaining the second set of resources corresponding to the first copy pool that has been defined for the disk pool; subsequent to acquiring the third set of hardware resources corresponding to the tape pool, writing the data to the tape pool; and subsequent to writing the data to the tape pool, writing the data to the first copy pool that has been defined for disk pool, wherein a second copy pool has been defined for the tape pool, and wherein no hardware resources have been acquired for the second copy pool that has been defined for the tape pool.