Abstract: The disclosed device, system and methods of data management facilitate the implementation of improved mirroring, back-up, volume remapping and extent relocation, among others. The disclosed intelligent I/O stream splitter may intercept and alter an I/O stream from a communications link. In the case of mirroring, the intelligent splitter may intercept write commands and associated data from a mainframe that target a specific storage location on a specific control unit. The splitter may then transmit the intercepted I/O stream to the targeted control unit and storage location over one link and transmit on another link an altered version of the intercepted I/O stream to another control unit, which is responsible for holding a mirrored version of the data. The altered version could have the same data as that on the one link, or may include new frame headers, changes to the control information, or changes to the data itself.

Abstract: A device, system and methods of data management are disclosed, which facilitate the implementation of improved mirroring, back-up, volume remapping, extent relocation, prefetching, caching, data reformatting, statistic gathering, and data translation, among others. A new, intelligent I/O stream splitter is disclosed that may intercept and alter an I/O stream received by the splitter from a communications link. For example, in the case of mirroring, the intelligent splitter may intercept write commands and associated data from a mainframe that target a specific storage location on a specific control unit. The splitter may then transmit the intercepted I/O stream to the targeted control unit and storage location over one link and in parallel transmit on another link an altered version of the intercepted I/O stream to another control unit, which is responsible for holding a mirrored version of the data.