Patent ID: 7389300

Claim:
A system, comprising: a cluster including a plurality of nodes, including a source node, a primary group of one or more nodes, and a secondary group of one or more nodes, wherein the primary group does not include the source node, and wherein the secondary group does not include the source node; a processor; and memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory stores program instructions computer-executable by the processor to implement a replication manager; wherein the replication manager is configured to: in accordance with a configurable replication policy, identify the primary group of one or more nodes of the cluster to store one or more respective primary replicas of a specified source memory region of the source node; and identify a node of the primary group to serve as an initiator of replication to the secondary group of one or more nodes of the cluster; and in response to a replication request, within an atomic transaction, copy contents of one or more blocks of the source memory region to a respective primary replica at each node of the primary group; and initiate an operation to copy the contents of the one or more blocks from the initiator to an additional replica at an additional node of the secondary group.