Patent ID: 7734603

Claim:
A method for managing storage resources of a storage system, the method comprising: performing, on a remote storage array at the logical unit level, a content addressable storage computation to compute a key from content of a first data block in response to receiving a client request to write the first data block to the storage system; comparing, on the remote storage array, the computed key with keys of entries in a mapping table to determine if there is a match; in response to determining there is a match, comparing, on the remote storage array, the content of the first data block with content of a second data block previously stored on the resources of the remote storage array; and in response to determining that the comparison of the data block contents results in a match, incrementing a reference count on the previously stored data block, cooperating with a file system executing on the storage system to provide the storage system with a physical block number of the second data block to the storage system rather than storing duplicate data block contents on the storage resources of the remote storage array; and wherein the remote storage array operates in parallel with one or more additional remote storage arrays to allow aggregation of resources among the remote storage arrays, the parallel operation performing content addressable storage computations associated with the write operations on each of the one or more remote storage arrays.