Patent ID: 8683152

Claim:
A method of converting a read-only replica of a source virtual volume in a source virtual storage partition associated with a source aggregate of a source storage system at a destination storage system to a writable destination virtual volume therein, comprising: reading, through a file system at the destination storage system, a superblock of the read-only replica of the source virtual volume at the destination storage system, wherein the read-only replica of the source virtual volume is transferred from the source storage system to a destination virtual storage partition associated with a destination aggregate at the destination storage system through a replication engine associated with the source storage system and the destination storage system, wherein the source virtual volume and the read-only replica thereof at the destination virtual storage partition are respectively abstracted from an underlying source storage disk associated with the source storage system and an underlying destination storage disk associated with the destination storage system through the source aggregate and the destination aggregate inside which the source virtual volume and a destination virtual volume signifying the read-only replica are created, and wherein the source virtual storage partition and the destination virtual storage partition are, respectively, secure logical partitions of the source storage system and the destination storage system created by an operating system associated therewith; modifying the superblock of the read-only replica in a memory of the destination storage system to clear a replica flag associated therewith through the replication engine; associating, through the file system at the destination storage system, the modified superblock with at least one virtual volume block number (virtual VBN) configured to be previously associated with the superblock of the read-only replica of the source virtual volume of the source storage system without initiating a destination consistency point (DCP) at the destination storage system to render the destination virtual volume writable, wherein the virtual VBN is configured to index a virtual volume level version of block allocation files of a virtual volume including at least one of the source virtual volume and the destination virtual volume, and wherein the DCP defines a process during which an operating system associated with the destination storage system flushes data changes in the memory of the destination storage system to the destination storage disk associated with the destination storage system; modifying a disk group label indicating an association of the destination storage disk with the read-only replica of the source virtual volume of the source storage system to reflect an association of the destination storage disk with the writable destination virtual volume; and initiating the DCP to ensure that the modified superblock and the modified disk group label associated with the writable destination virtual volume are flushed to the destination storage disk.