Patent ID: 7941632

Claim:
A storage virtualization system, comprising: respective connections to a host system and a storage system; and a processor-based controller device operative to dynamically map addresses between a virtual disk address and one or more physical block addresses for the storage system in response to a request from the host system to perform a storage operation on the storage system, including: receiving a request from a host to perform a storage operation on one or more blocks of the storage system, said request including a virtual memory address; determining from a mapping table whether memory space in the storage system has been allocated for the virtual memory address; if it is determined that memory space has been allocated, completing the storage operation on the allocated memory space; and if it is determined that no memory space has been allocated: automatically allocating memory space in the storage system for the virtual address, wherein automatically allocating includes automatically updating a mapping table to include an entry linking the virtual address and one or more physical block addresses of the storage system; and completing the storage operation on the allocated memory space.