Patent ID: 8862813

Claim:
A method for accelerating responses to requests for transactions involving data operations, the method comprising: presenting from a server device a logical disk having corresponding physical storage resources that are separate from the server device, the logical disk being presented to a client device; maintaining a disk block cache corresponding to the logical disk and the physical storage resources within the server device, the cache including blocks of data for the logical disk that are frequently accessed, the cache being resident in a memory having a responsiveness that is faster than a responsiveness of the physical storage resources, the cache being transparent to the client device to which the logical disk is presented; receiving from the client device a transaction request that involves a data operation on the logical disk, the transaction request being received through a first network connection with the client device; satisfying the data operation on the logical disk using the cache; and reconciling the cache with data for the logical disk that is stored on the physical storage resources, through a second network connection with the physical storage devices, the second network connection being external to the server device.