A system and method for transferring ownership of a volume in a networked storage environment. The method first moves the disks that comprise the volume being transferred from a source-owned state to an un-owned state. Next the disks are moved to a destination-owned state. Each step of the transfer process completes on all disks before the next step begins to ensure consistency and disks that have conflicting owners. Alternate embodiments include logging by the source and destination nodes to permit a resumption of the transfer if one node becomes inactive during the transfer.
A takeover system and method for high availability in the face of component failures for a multiple-node storage system cluster is provided. When a takeover is triggered either through a loss of cluster heartbeat, or through a user-initiated command, the system of the present invention is configured such that one or more surviving nodes asserts ownership on one or more of the failed node's disks such that all of the disks become locally owned by one of the surviving nodes. An assimilation of the disks into one or more aggregates is performed, and any duplicated file system identification numbers are corrected to avoid errors. As the disks thus appear to be locally owned by the surviving nodes, one or more newly assimilated aggregates are thus exposed to any N-module that interfaces with the surviving nodes.
