Patent ID: 8171098

Claim:
On a set of computerized devices, a method of providing a storage service, the method comprising: connecting the computerized devices to a computer network, the computerized devices including direct attached storage devices; configuring the computerized devices to behave as hosts which individually and logically couple to an array of storage devices through a shared bus; and performing a host IO operation among the computerized devices, the host IO operation involving accessing data from a particular computerized device through the computer network to the direct attached storage devices of the computerized devices; wherein direct attached storage of a first computerized device includes a disk; wherein configuring the computerized devices includes: exporting a partition of the disk from the first computerized device; and importing the partition of the disk to a second computerized device; wherein exporting the partition of the disk from the first computerized device includes controlling direct local IO access to the partition of the disk and providing a logical export access point on the first computerized device to enable exporting of the partition of the disk from the first computerized device; and wherein the method further comprises: exporting a partition of another disk from another computerized device; and importing the partition of the other disk on the first computerized device to provide access to a mirror through the first computerized device; wherein the other computerized device is the second computerized device; wherein controlling the direct local IO access and providing the logical export access point includes: installing, on the first computerized device, an export layered driver between a function driver and a root driver of the disk, wherein the function driver, the export layered driver, and the root driver comprise a device driver stack.