Patent ID: 8296530

Claim:
A method for optimizing the number of data writes to virtually provisioned logical units of a physical data storage array, the method comprising: at a virtual provisioning layer associated with a physical storage array: receiving, from a client, a first write request for writing data to a first portion of a first data block of a virtually provisioned logical unit (VLUN) of the physical data storage array, wherein the size of the first portion is less than the size of the first data block; in response to receiving the first write request, generating, from the virtual provisioning layer, a second write request for writing the first portion of the data from the received first write request and at least one second portion of fill data generated by the virtual provisioning layer such that a size of the first portion and the at least one second portion is equal to a size of the first data block; and forwarding the second write request to the physical layer associated with the data storage array.