Patent ID: 7409510

Claim:
A method for performing a copy operation, comprising: issuing a remote mirroring copy operation from a primary mirroring portion of data to a secondary mirroring portion of data, wherein the primary mirroring portion of data is a source of the remote mirroring copy operation and the secondary mirroring portion of data is a target of the remote mirroring copy operation; issuing an instant virtual copy operation from a first portion of data to the primary mirroring portion of data, wherein the primary mirroring portion of data corresponds to the secondary mirroring portion of data, and wherein the primary mirroring portion of data and the secondary mirroring portion of data are in a mirroring relationship based on the remote mirroring copy operation; in response to receiving the instant virtual copy operation, transitioning the mirroring relationship to a duplex pending state in response to determining that the mirroring relationship is in a full duplex state; setting indicators corresponding to blocks of data involved in the instant virtual copy operation from the first portion of data to the primary mirroring portion of data in an out of sync structure associated with the primary mirroring portion of data, wherein the out of sync structure indicates which blocks of data in the primary mirroring portion of data have been modified since a last time the blocks of data were copied to the secondary mirroring portion of data, wherein the out of sync structure is updated based on indicators set in a target structure that includes an indicator for each block of data in the first portion of data that is part of the instant virtual copy relationship between the first portion of data and the primary mirroring portion of data and that indicates whether the block of data has been copied from the first portion of data to the primary mirroring portion of data; and when the mirroring relationship is in a duplex pending state, transferring each block of data involved in the instant virtual copy operation from the primary mirroring portion of data to the secondary mirroring portion of data based on the indicators set in the out of sync structure.