Mechanisms for controlling access to storage volumes on the secondary storage system is provided. A determination is made as to whether a first site computing device has sent a notification of a failure condition of a first site. In response to a determination that the notification of the failure condition of the first site has not been received, secondary workloads of a second site computing device are permitted to access storage volumes on the secondary storage system. In response to a determination that the notification of the failure condition of the first site has been received, a mode of operation of the second site is modified from a normal mode of operation to a failure mode of operation. In the failure mode of operation, the storage system controller of the second site blocks at least a portion of access requests from secondary workloads of the second site computing device.