Ownership-dependent access to a virtual volume

At any point in time, a virtual volume is ‘owned' by a TS7700 Cluster. The owning cluster has control over access to the volume and changes to the attributes associated with the volume (such as category or storage constructs). Cluster ownership of a virtual volume can change dynamically based on which cluster in the grid configuration is requesting a mount of the volume. If a local TS7700 Cluster receives a mount request for a volume it does not own, it must first obtain ownership from the owning cluster. If the TS7700 Clusters are in a grid configuration and at least one of the 1-Gb Ethernet links between them are operational, any required change of ownership is automatic. This change of ownership adds a small amount of time to the mount operation.