Patent ID: 7797393

Claim:
A shared storage network system, comprising a plurality of storage servers, each providing a storage portion of the shared storage network system, each storage portion being divided into a plurality of sectors, each sector being divided into a plurality of blocks, a virtual block identifier being associated to each of the blocks such that the entirety of all of the virtual block identifiers of the blocks form a global block address space in which each of the virtual block identifiers is unique; at least one storage client; wherein the plurality of storage servers and the at least one storage client are grouped into a plurality of local area networks interconnected to form a global network; the at least one storage client is adapted to have read and/or write access to at least one block of at least one of the storage portions associated to one of the local area networks which differs from the local area network of the storage client; the plurality of local area networks are interconnected such that in case of a read or a write access of one of the at least one storage client to at least one of the blocks, the virtual block address of a block to which access is desired is translated into a physical block address to identify the physical block associated with the virtual block; and the shared network system is adapted such that the physical block address of each block comprises a non-deterministic physical block address to address the unique physical block mapping to a particular virtual block associated with a particular virtual block identifier, and a deterministic physical block address to address a unique physical block in the global network to determine the location of the associated physical block.