Patent ID: 8527697

Claim:
A storage system, comprising: a plurality of physical storage devices; and a storage module operable within a communication network to present the plurality of physical storage devices as a virtual storage device to a plurality of network computing elements that are coupled to the communication network, wherein the virtual storage device comprises a plurality of virtual storage volumes, wherein the storage module is communicatively coupled to the physical storage devices via the communication network, wherein the storage module comprises maps that are used to route read/write requests from the network computing elements to the virtual storage volumes using preassigned paths selected from a plurality of paths through the communication network between the storage module and the physical storage devices storing the virtual storage volumes, and wherein each map links read/write requests from at least one network computing element to a respective virtual storage volume within the virtual storage device, wherein each map is operable to balance distribution of the read/write requests by handling a predetermined number of read/write requests.