US Patent 7814064 Dynamic distributed consensus algorithm

A method and apparatus for data management are disclosed. Data from a first storage device from a subset of a plurality of storage devices is relocated to a second storage device from the plurality of storage devices upon unavailability of the first storage device during a data operation. Each storage device from the subset of the plurality of storage devices includes a data replica. Status parameters on each storage device are updated, wherein a subset of the status parameters indicates addition of the second storage device to the plurality of storage devices.