US Patent 8392680 Accessing a volume in a distributed environment

In one aspect, a method includes exposing a set of storage volumes to a host at a requested point in time, in a virtual access mode. The set of storage volumes are handled by distributed virtual consistency groups (CGs) having a background process wherein the distributed virtual CGs update the set of storage volumes to the requested point in time. The method also includes exposing a first service storage volume at a data protection appliance, determining if the virtual CGs have rolled back and using at least one of a central manager and a splitter to account for input/output requests (IOs) when a virtual CG has not rolled back.