IBM Assigned Patent

IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y., has been assigned a patent (8,250,326) developed by Akram Bitar, Kfar Peqiin, Israel, and Amir Sasson, Haifa, Israel, for a "data swapping in a storage system."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "Systems and methods for data swapping in a storage network are provided. The method comprises associating a flag with a first track on a first volume (TA1) and a first track on a second volume (TB1) to indicate that I/O access to TA1 is to be redirected to TB1, and that I/O access to TB1 is to be redirected to TA1; locking TA1 and TB1 to prohibit I/O access to TA1 and TB1; copying data stored on TA1 and TB1 to cache; swapping data between TA1 and TB1; unlocking TA1 and TB1 to allow I/O access to TA1 and TB1; redirecting I/O access to TB1, in response to receiving an I/O request to access TA1, when TA1 is flagged, and redirecting I/O access to TA1, in response to receiving an I/O request to access TB1, when TB1 is flagged."

The patent application was filed on Aug. 29, 2008 (12/201,539).