Patent ID: 7464126

Claim:
A method of creating an application-consistent remote copy of data using remote mirroring, comprising: registering at least one of a plurality of application hosts associated with the application as an application-consistent host group; intercepting a write request from at least one of a plurality of the application hosts; appending the intercepted write request as a write record in a write record format to a local log in a local replication volume, said record format comprising content-dependent hash head and tail signatures and at least one uniquely verifiable data field; instructing the application hosts to prepare a consistency point, said preparation including at least quiescing application updates; generating a consistency point record to identify a set of write records comprising a consistency point data set, said consistency point being appended to said write record; replicating the write records and the consistency point records to a remote log in a remote replication volume, said records being written in a consecutive region of said remote log; scanning the remote log for the consistency point record until all the data associated with the consistency point has been replicated; verifying the validity of a content of each of the write records in the remote log, said validity being determined based on criteria selected from the group consisting of: valid value boundaries, said hashed head and tail signatures and a sequence number contained in one of said at least one uniquely verifiable data fields; generating a validated consistency point update transaction after all of said write records have been replicated and validated, said validated consistency point record including at least a last sequence number generated; and writing the validated write packets in a sequential fashion and the validated consistency point update transaction to a remote storage device to generate an application-consistent remote copy of the consistency point data set, said validated write packets being written in a fashion independent of a manner in which said write packets were replicated.