Patent ID: 8205058

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving a request to write data to a disk pool of a storage hierarchy, wherein the storage hierarchy includes a tape pool in addition to the disk pool, wherein a first copy pool has been defined for 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 corresponding to the first copy pool that has been defined for the disk pool, by locking the first set of hardware resources used for writing to the first copy pool; determining that the data cannot be written to the disk pool of the storage hierarchy; retaining the acquired first set of hardware resources, in response to determining that data cannot be written to the disk pool; writing the data to the tape pool of the storage hierarchy; and writing the data to the first copy pool, in response to writing the data to the tape pool of the storage hierarchy, wherein a release of the acquired first set of hardware resources corresponding to the first copy pool is avoided in response to the writing of the data to the first copy pool, wherein an inheritance model for simultaneous write operations is provided in which a copy pool list of the disk pool is inherited by the tape pool, and wherein use of the inheritance model reduces effects caused by release and reacquisition of any hardware resources associated with copy pools.