Importance

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Abstract

A peripheral device includes a data operation controller (40) which manages a serverless network data storage operation for either writing data (e.g., backing up data) or reading data (e.g., restoring backed-up data). In an example embodiment, the peripheral device is an I/O drive (26), such as a magnetic tape drive, situated at a peripheral node of a storage area network (20). In the network data storage operation, data is obtained (under the direction of the peripheral device-resident data operation controller) from a source drive storage medium at a source drive, transmitted through the peripheral device's interface with the storage network, and then recorded (under the direction of the peripheral device-resident data operation controller) by a destination drive on a destination drive storage medium. In one embodiment in which the peripheral device that has the data operation controller is an I/O drive, the medium handled by the I/O drive can be the medium on which data is written or from which data is read. Thus, the I/O drive which has the data operation controller can itself be the destination drive for a write (e.g., backup) procedure or the source drive for a read (e.g., restore) procedure. In other embodiments, the I/O drive that has the data operation controller need not be either the destination drive nor the source drive, as both the destination drive and the source drive can be external drives of the storage area network (e.g., situated on the storage network at nodes apart from a node whereat the I/O drive resides).

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First Claim