Patent ID: 8028054

Claim:
A system, comprising: a first storage system; a second storage system coupled to the first storage system and configured to detect a failure of the first storage system, upon detection of the failure of the first storage system the second storage system placing reservations on data storage devices used by the first storage system, and the second storage system to begin servicing data access requests directed to the first storage system; after repair of the first storage system, the first storage system to begin a boot operation, the first storage system to detect the reservations placed by the second storage system on the data storage devices, and in response to detecting the reservations halting the boot operation and writing to a memory a first state indicating that the first storage system is booting; the second storage system reading the first state, and in response to reading the first state releasing the reservations and writing a second state into the memory; in response to the second state written into the memory, the first storage system initializing the data storage devices, and writing a first message into the memory; in response to the first message, the second storage system to no longer service the data access requests directed to the first storage system, the second storage system to release resources including the data storage devices to the first storage system, and the second storage system to write a second message into the memory; and in response to the second message, the first storage system completes the boot operation and begins processing the data access requests directed to the first storage system.