Patent ID: 7152096

Claim:
A system comprising: a plurality of data centers, including a first data center and a second data center, each data center comprising: a storage system comprising a plurality of physical volumes storing information associated with at least one virtual volume; and a host server; a directory server comprising information on the first data center and the second data center and information on correspondence between the at least one virtual volume and the plurality of physical volumes of the storage system; a plurality of access gateways; a network interconnecting said plurality of data centers, said directory server, and said plurality of access gateways; wherein each of said plurality of data centers is accessible from at least one of said plurality of access gateways and wherein, responsive to input received via any one of said plurality of access gateways, the information about the first data center and the second data center is fetched from the directory server, the fetched information comprising proximity information for a source of said input and any of said plurality of data centers may be configured as a primary (source) of data, and any of said plurality of data centers may be configured as a secondary (target) of data in a copy operation based on the fetched information.