Patent ID: 7266555

Claim:
A storage port comprising: a network interface coupling the storage port to a remote storage over a wide area network and selectively accessing a file or a directory from the remote storage over the wide area network; a client interface coupled to a client computer, the client computer having a local file system with a format for local file system requests, the client interface mounting the storage port as a storage device for the client computer to provide access to the file or directory of the remote storage via a local file system request from the client computer, the local file system request including a file descriptor identifying a file in the local file system; a file request translator translating the local file system request to a network file system request having a different format from the format for local file system requests and being transmitted over the wide area network by the network interface to the remote storage, the network file system request including a wide area network address of the remote storage and a storage handler identifying the file to the remote storage, the file request translator includes a local file interception intercepting the local file system request and a storage system kernel process executing a thread of execution received from the local file interception and obtaining the storage handler; and a cache storing information at the storage port accessed from the remote storage.