Method and Apparatus for Increasing the Accuracy of Predicting Future IO Operations on a Storage System

A non-transitory tangible computer readable storage medium having stored thereon a computer program for increasing the accuracy of predicting future IO operations on a storage system, the computer program including a set of instructions which, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to perform a method comprising the steps of:

• creating a snapshot of a production volume;
• linking the snapshot to a thin device;
• mounting the thin device in a cloud tethering subsystem;
• tagging the thin device to identify the thin device as being used by the cloud tethering subsystem in connection with movement of the snapshot to a cloud repository;
• issuing data read operations, by the cloud tethering subsystem, on the tagged thin device;
• executing the data read operations by a front-end adapter of the storage system to forward data associated with the data read operations to the cloud repository;
• determining read operation access patterns on a cache of the storage system by a cache manager, the read operation access patterns being used by the cache manager to set cache policies governing management of the cache;
• and
• not using data read operations on tagged thin devices, by the cache manager, in connection with determining the read operation access patterns, so that movement of snapshots to the cloud repository do not affect setting of the cache policies governing the management of the cache.