Patent ID: 8015339

Claim:
A system for providing virtual local storage on remote storage devices to hosts, the system comprising: remote storage; an access controller coupled to the remote storage, the access controller comprising: a first controller operable to connect to and interface with a serial transport medium, wherein when the access controller is connected to the serial transport medium, the access controller is positioned between hosts connected to the serial transport medium and the remote storage so that requests from the hosts to access the remote storage pass through the access controller; a supervisor unit coupled to the first controller, the supervisor unit operable to: maintain a map that maps hosts connected to the serial transport medium to subsets of storage space on the remote storage in order to implement centralized access controls to the subsets of remote storage; process a command received from a host, wherein the command includes a native low level block protocol request for access to a subset of storage; use native low level block protocol information in the command to determine if the host is allowed access to the requested subset of storage in accordance with the map; and allow the requesting host to access the requested subset of storage if the requesting host is allowed access to the requested subset of storage.