Patent ID: 8301809

Claim:
A storage virtualization computer system comprising: a host entity for issuing IO requests; an external storage virtualization controller (SVC) coupled to said host entity for executing IO operations in response to said IO requests; and a group of physical storage devices (PSDs), each coupled to the external storage virtualization controller through a point-to-point serial-signal interconnect, for providing storage to the storage virtualization computer system through the external storage virtualization controller, in which each of the PSDs is a hard disk drive (HDD) or a solid state drive (SSD); wherein said external storage virtualization controller comprises: a central processing circuitry for performing said IO operations in response to said IO requests of said host entity; at least one IO device interconnect controller coupled to said central processing circuitry; at least one host-side IO device interconnect port provided in one of said at least one IO device interconnect controller for coupling to said host entity; and at least one device-side IO device interconnect port provided in one of said at least one IO device interconnect controller for coupling to said group of PSDs through said point-to-point serial-signal interconnect, said device-side IO device interconnect port being a serial port for point-to-point serial-signal transmission; wherein said computer system further comprises a detachable canister attached to said external storage virtualization controller for containing one of said PSDs therein; wherein said external storage virtualization controller is configured to define at least one virtualized logical media unit (LMU) consisting of sections of said group of PSDs, and is configured to provide a mapping that maps combination of the sections of said group of PSDs to the at least one virtualized LMU visible to the host entity, and the at least one virtualized LMU is contiguously addressable by the host entity to which the at least one virtualized LMU is made available; wherein said external SVC issues a device-side IO request to said IO device interconnect controller, and said IO device interconnect controller re-formats said device-side IO request and accompanying IO data into at least one data packet for transmission to said group of PSDs through said device-side IO device interconnect port; and wherein a new PSD is attached to said external storage virtualization controller when said external storage virtualization controller is on-line, wherein the IO requests are parsed to determine what operation is to be performed and on which section of the virtualized LMU the operation is to be performed; wherein when the operation consists only of internally-emulated, asynchronous, and synchronous device sub-operations, then the SVC executes the associated sub-operations including transferring any associated data to/from the host entity and then, when there is a failed operation, responding to the host entity with a status report that indicates the reason for the failed operation.