Managing failures in mirrored systems

A system in communication with primary and secondary storage locations, wherein a copy relationship indicates updates to the primary storage locations that are copied to the secondary storage locations comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a computer readable storage medium including code executed by the processor to perform operations, the operations comprising:
• maintaining a copy relationship between primary and secondary storage locations, wherein updates to the primary storage locations are copied to the secondary storage locations;
• detecting a failure preventing an application from writing updates to a first set of the primary storage locations, wherein the first set of primary storage locations and a second set of primary storage locations are in one consistency group;
• receiving a failure message for the application in response to detecting the failure, wherein the failure message is not provided to the application;
• suspending the copying of updates to the primary storage locations to the secondary storage locations, wherein the suspension of copying of updates applies to copying updates to the first and second sets of primary storage locations to a corresponding first and second sets of secondary storage locations, and wherein the suspension of copying does not apply to copying updates to a third set of primary storage locations to a corresponding third set of secondary storage locations, wherein the third set of primary storage locations are not in the consistency group including the first and second sets of primary storage locations;
• and
• providing the failure message to the application in response to suspending the copying.

An article of manufacture comprising a computer readable storage medium including code executed to communicate with a primary and secondary storage locations, wherein a copy relationship indicates updates to the primary storage locations that are copied to the secondary storage locations, and wherein the code is executed to perform operations, the operations comprising:

• maintaining a copy relationship between primary and secondary storage locations, wherein updates to the primary storage locations are copied to the secondary storage locations;
• detecting a failure preventing an application from writing updates to a first set of the primary storage locations, wherein the first set of primary storage locations and a second set of primary storage locations are in one consistency group;
• receiving a failure message for the application in response to detecting the failure, wherein the failure message is not provided to the application;
• suspending the copying of updates to the primary storage locations to the secondary storage locations, wherein the suspension of copying of updates applies to copying updates to the first and second sets of primary storage locations to a corresponding first and second sets of secondary storage locations, and wherein the suspension of copying does not apply to copying updates to a third set of primary storage locations to a corresponding third set of secondary storage locations, wherein the third set of primary storage locations are not in the consistency group including the first and second sets of primary storage locations;
• and
• providing the failure message to the application in response to suspending the copying.