Patent ID: 8775696

Claim:
A method for enabling a virtual machine (VM), executing on a physical node to access a partition of a storage system comprising: associating a VM identifier with the VM for use when communicating with the storage system, wherein the VM identifier differs from a default identifier of a host bus adapter (HBA) usable by the physical node to communicate with the storage system; determining whether the HBA supports dynamic assignment of VM identifiers other than the default identifier to access partitions in the storage system, wherein the default identifier is used to access partitions in the storage system when the HBA does not support dynamic assignment of VM identifiers; when the HBA supports dynamic assignment, performing: requesting the storage system to permit access to the partition by a requesting entity upon a transmission of the VM identifier to the storage system by the requesting entity; and instructing the HBA to transmit a representation of the VM identifier, rather than the default identifier of the HBA, to the storage system to access the partition on behalf of the VM during input/output (I/O) operations performed by the VM.