Patent ID: 7246260

Claim:
A data storage system comprising: a redundancy group including a plurality of resources; two or more array management functions (AMFs) sharing access to the redundancy group, wherein the AMFs provide concurrent access to the redundancy group for associated host systems; and an interconnect medium for connecting the AMFs with the redundancy group; wherein when a first one of the AMFs desires to perform an operation on a first resource in the redundancy group, the first AMF arbitrates with the other AMFs sharing access to the redundancy group for a lock on the first resource, whereupon the first AMF performs the operation on the first resource and concurrently sends replication data and state information associated with the first resource, the replication data and state information including the state of completion of the operation, to the other AMFs such that if the first AMF fails while performing the operation, one of the other AMFs is able to complete the operation and wherein if the first AMF fails while performing the operation, one of the other AMFs completes the operation by using sent replication data and state information.