Patent ID: 8312215

Claim:
A software-based Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) system comprising: an input/output (I/O) interface device having a plurality of ports, each of the ports having a respective port number; at least one actual physical disk (PD) connected to at least one of the ports of the I/O interface device; a memory device; and a processor, the processor being configured to perform a conflict configuration resolution algorithm that detects an existence of a conflict in a current configuration of the RAID system and resolves a detected configuration conflict, the processor detecting an existence of a configuration conflict by determining whether or not a current RAID system configuration indicates that a first logical disk and a second logical disk are mapped to a same port number of the I/O interface device, the first and second logical disks being logical representations of first and second actual PDs, respectively, wherein the first and second logical disks are associated with first and second virtual disk (VD) configurations, respectively, and wherein the processor determines whether or not the current RAID system configuration indicates that the first and second logical disks are mapped to the same port number by: sending a command from the processor to the ports of the I/O interface device that causes any actual PDs connected to the ports to return data associated with the respective actual PD to the processor; processing the returned data in the processor to compute PD_References associated with the returned data; and in the processor, comparing the PD_References associated the returned data with respective logical PD_References contained in the first and second VDs configurations of the RAID system to determine whether or not the PD_References associated with the returned data and the respective logical PD_References match, wherein if the processor determines that at least one of the PD_References associated with the returned data does not match the respective logical PD_Reference, the processor decides that a configuration conflict exists, wherein if the processor determines that the first and second logical disks are mapped to the same port number of the I/O interface device, the processor resolves the configuration conflict by maintaining the mapping of the first logical disk to said same port number and remapping the second local disk to a different port of the I/O interface device that is not currently connected to an actual PD, wherein the remapping results in the configuration of the RAID system being changed from said current configuration to a new configuration.