International Business Machines Corporation
Recovering from write cache failures in servers

Abstract:

A computer-implemented method, according to one embodiment, includes: in response to experiencing a power loss event, resupplying power to NVRAM which includes a write cache. In response to detecting that the NVRAM has experienced a failure event, the NVRAM is temporarily guarded from further use. Moreover, a portion of volatile memory is allocated to serve as a temporary write cache. The allocated portion of volatile memory is also cleared. A determination is made as to whether data is present in the write cache in the NVRAM, and in response to determining that data is present in the write cache, one or more volumes in memory which correspond to the data present in the write cache in the NVRAM are marked as having experienced data loss. Furthermore, a warning is sent which indicates that data loss has been experienced by the one or more marked volumes in the memory.