Patent ID: 7596658

Claim:
A volume cascade system, comprising: a management server; a primary site storage device for storing a primary volume; a secondary-primary site storage device for storing a secondary-primary volume backed up from the primary volume; a secondary site storage device for storing a secondary volume backed up from the secondary-primary volume; and a network coupling the management server, the primary site storage device, the secondary site storage device and the secondary site storage device, where each of the primary site storage device, the secondary site storage device and the secondary site storage device includes: a copy section which copies data stored in an upper-stream volume which is the primary volume or the secondary-primary volume to a lower-stream volume which is the secondary-primary volume or the secondary volume; and a capacity expanding section which receives a capacity expansion instruction from the management server and expands a capacity of a logical volume stored in each storage device based on the capacity expansion instruction, and the management server includes: a cascade configuration storage section which stores volume cascade configuration information which is information related to a configuration of the volume cascade; a capacity expansion target volume determination section which determines at least one of the primary volume, the secondary-primary volume and the secondary volume as a target of capacity expansion based on usage rate which exceeds a threshold; a cascade configuration specifying section which specifies, based on the cascade configuration information, other logical volume related to the volume determined by the capacity expansion target volume determination section and determines amount of capacity expansion of the upper-stream volume and the lower-stream volume of which amount is more than those of the upper-stream volume; and a capacity expansion control section which transmits, to at least one of the primary volume, the secondary-primary volume and the secondary volume, the capacity expansion instruction which designates two or more target volumes and the amount of capacity expansion determined by the cascade configuration specifying section, wherein first the capacity expansion of the lower-stream volume is executed and next the capacity expansion of the upper-stream volume is executed based on the capacity expansion instruction.