System and Method for Providing On-Demand High-Availability Service on a Storage Cluster

A computer program product residing on a non-transitory computer-readable medium having a plurality of instructions stored thereon which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising:

• adding a new single-node appliance to the storage cluster, wherein the storage cluster includes one or more original single-node appliances and an internal remote system configured to facilitate intra-cluster orchestration operations;
• generating a remote system object representing the new single-node appliance in the internal remote system;
• determining an appliance identifier for the remote system object representing the new single-node appliance;
• in response to determining that the appliance identifier for the remote system object representing the new single-node appliance is a non-zero appliance identifier, establishing an internal remote session between the remote system object and the storage cluster;
• presenting the one or more original single-node appliances and the new single-node appliance as a unified system;
• and
• provisioning one or more protected storage volumes on any of the single-node appliances included in the unified system.

A computing system for providing on-demand high-availability service on a storage cluster, comprising:

• a memory;
• and
• a processor configured to:
• add a new single-node appliance to the storage cluster, wherein the storage cluster includes one or more original single-node appliances and an internal remote system configured to facilitate intra-cluster orchestration operations;
• generate a remote system object representing the new single-node appliance in the internal remote system;
• determine an appliance identifier for the remote system object representing the new single-node appliance;
• in response to determining that the appliance identifier for the remote system object representing the new single-node appliance is a non-zero appliance identifier, establish an internal remote session between the remote system object and the storage cluster;
• present the one or more original single-node appliances and the new single-node appliance as a unified system;
• and
• provision one or more protected storage volumes on any of the single-node appliances included in the unified system.