Abstract: Aspects and features of a negotiating tool, system and methods are disclosed herein.

Abstract: Method and system for replicating a storage volume is provided. Information is adaptively replicated in a swap mode or a copy mode. When information is copied from a storage volume to a memory buffer, an application determines if another information transfer from the same source volume is pending. If a transfer from the same source is pending, then information is copied from the memory buffer to a stolen buffer in a copy mode. If a transfer from the same source is not pending, then instead of copying the information, the application enables a swap mode. During the swap mode, an operating system for a storage system swaps a pointer from the stolen buffer to information stored in the memory buffer. The memory buffer itself is invalidated so that no other module can access the memory buffer. Because the pointers are swapped, the application accesses information directly from the memory buffer.

Abstract: A mirror destination storage server receives mirror update data streams from several mirror source storage servers. Data received from each mirror is cached and periodic checkpoints are queued, but the data is not committed to long-term storage at the mirror destination storage server immediately. Instead, the data remains in cache memory until a trigger event causes the cache to be flushed to a mass storage device. The trigger event is asynchronous with respect to packets of at least one of the data streams. In one embodiment, the trigger event is asynchronous with respect to packets of all of the data streams.