Patent ID: 8239884

Claim:
An apparatus comprising a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium for providing an independent interface to update a function of a storage application independent from the storage application, and to update a function of a network interface driver independent from the network interface driver, the apparatus comprising: an isolation module stored on a storage device, the isolation module to isolate the storage application from the network interface driver communicatively connecting a host computing device to a network interface device, the network interface device providing a physical connection to a storage area network (SAN) switch that connects the host computing device to a storage device, the isolation module configured to: receive a storage application function call from the storage application; translate the storage application function call to a corresponding network interface driver function call; invoke the corresponding network interface driver function call of the network interface driver in response to receiving the storage application function call from the storage application; and transfer data blocks between the storage application and the network interface driver through a data buffer.