Patent ID: 7275050

Claim:
A storage system to be coupled to an IP network, said storage system comprising: a physical input/output port to be coupled to the IP network; a control unit coupled to the physical input/output port; and a plurality of disk drives coupled to the control unit, the physical input/output port being accessible by a block I/O request having a first port number via the IP network and a file I/O request having a second port number via the IP network, wherein the plurality of disk drives are configured into a plurality of volumes, of which a first volume is assigned to store data related to the block I/O request and a second volume is assigned to store data related to the file I/O request, when an I/O request received at the control unit via the physical input/output port is the block I/O request including the first port number, the control unit performs a first operation, corresponding to the first port number, for storing data in the first volume, and when an I/O request received at the control unit via the physical input/output port is the file I/O request including the second port number, the control unit performs a second operation, corresponding to the second port number, for storing data in the second volume.