Patent ID: 8874807

Claim:
A system comprising: database servers, configured to receive database requests to perform database operations and execute those database operations based on data stored within at least one storage system; one or more first computing devices comprising hardware components configured to execute instructions that implement the database servers; a storage system, configured to receive input/output requests for specified blocks of data stored in one or more storage devices in the storage system and respond to the input/output requests at least by retrieving the specified blocks of data from the one or more storage devices; one or more second computing devices comprising hardware components configured to implement the storage system; wherein the one or more first computing devices are operatively coupled to the one or more second computing devices to enable communication between the database servers and the storage system; logic, at the database servers and/or the storage system, that categorizes at least particular input/output requests, sent to the storage system by the database servers, into different groups based at least partly on logical characteristics associated with particular database operations for which the database servers issued the particular input/output requests, the logical characteristics including at least one or more of: service identifiers, user identifiers, program names, purpose identifiers, or database operation statistics; logic, at the storage system, configured to prioritizes processing of the particular input/output requests based at least on the groups into which the particular input/output requests are categorized.