Patent ID: 7159010
Filing Date: 2007-01-02
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A system comprising: a communication adapter coupled to a transmission medium to transmit and receive data according to a network protocol, said communication adaptor configured to receive and respond to requests for storage services from clients, a data bus coupled to one or more storage nodes, each storage node comprising storage resources and logic to transmit data to or receive data from a storage medium according to an input/output format in response to said request for storage services from clients; and a first processing system to host a common transport agent, the common transport agent comprising a first interface comprising one or more method interfaces to communicate with each storage node independently of the input/output format of the storage node for transmitting data to or receiving data from the storage medium, and a second interface comprising one or more method interfaces to communicate with the communication adapter for communicating with said clients requesting storage services, the one or more method interfaces of the second interface being independent of the network protocol wherein the system further comprises a plurality of storage nodes coupled to the data bus; and wherein each of the storage nodes comprises an input/output controller coupled to a storage medium to store data in or retrieve data from the storage medium according to an input/output format; a second processing system to host a device driver module to communicate with the input/output controller according to the input/output format; and a remote transport agent to communicate with the first interface of the common transport agent independently of the input/output format.