US Patent 7269701 Self-configuration of source-to-target mapping

A computer program for automatically pairing target resources 20 such as volumes or logical units to source resources 20 containing data to be copied. Available target pools 48, 50, 52, 54 of target volumes are determined eligible for copying based on a technical compatibility and a user-defined metric such as recovery point or recovery time. User defined metrics and a policy to implement the metrics may be stored in a medium and selected by a user. The source volumes are prioritized, and progressively larger segments of the eligible target pools are searched for a target volume that satisfies the technical compatibility and user-defined metric. Where subgroups such as nested volumes are present in the source volumes, subgroups are also prioritized for searching. Where no target volume can be paired, the corresponding source volume is marked as processed and a search begins for the next source volume. An output report includes pairings of source to target volumes and source volumes for which no pairing was made.