A mechanism is provided in a data processing system for data replication. The mechanism divides a set of data to be replicated into a plurality of slices. Each slice of the plurality of slices is to be copied from a primary site to a master secondary site within a plurality of secondary sites. The plurality of secondary sites comprises the master secondary site and at least one subsidiary peer site. The mechanism copies the plurality of slices from the primary site to the plurality of secondary sites such that the master secondary site stores a first slice of the set of data and each of the at least one subsidiary peer site stores a corresponding slice of the set of data. Responsive to completion of copying the plurality of slices to the plurality of secondary sites, for each of the at least one subsidiary peer site, the mechanism initiates copying of the corresponding slice of the set of data to the master secondary site.