An apparatus and method for rapidly resuming the processing of client requests after a system failure event are disclosed. Accordingly, a surviving storage system, upon detecting a system failure event at a partner storage system, executes a takeover routine and conditions its system memory to reflect the state of the system memory of the failed storage system by processing client requests or commands stored in an operations log mirror. Then, the storage system converts the unused portion of the log mirror for use as an operations log, and resumes processing client requests prior to flushing any data to storage devices.