Patent ID: 8301810
Filing Date: 2012-10-30
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A storage virtualization computer system comprising: a host entity for issuing IO requests; an external storage virtualization controller coupled to said host entity for executing IO operations in response to said IO requests; and a group of physical storage devices (PSDs), each coupled to the storage virtualization controller through a SAS interconnect, for providing data storage space to the storage virtualization computer system through the storage virtualization controller in which each of the PSDs is a hard disk drive (HDD) or a solid state drive (SSD); wherein said external storage virtualization controller comprises: wherein said storage virtualization controller is configured to define at least one virtualized logical media unit consisting of sections of said group of PSDs, and said storage virtualization controller is configured for accommodating said group of PSDs having a SAS PSD in said group of PSDs or a SATA PSD in said group of PSDs connected to the same SAS interconnect; wherein said external storage virtualization controller is configured to define the at least one virtualized logical media unit (LMU) consisting of the sections of said group of PSDs, and is configured to provide a mapping that maps combination of the sections of said group of PSDs to the at least one virtualized LMU visible to the host entity, and the at least one virtualized LMU is contiguously addressable by the host entity to which the at least one virtualized LMU is made available; wherein the IO requests are parsed to determine what operation is to be performed and on which section of the virtualized LMU the operation is to be performed; and wherein when the operation consists only of internally-emulated, asynchronous, and synchronous device sub-operations, then the SVC executes the associated sub-operations including transferring any associated data to/from the host entity and then, when there is a failed operation, responding to the host entity with a status report that indicates the reason for the failed operation.