Patent ID: 7840723

Claim:
A method comprising: determining information regarding a virtual storage device, wherein the virtual storage device is a virtual disk, the virtual disk corresponds to a volume, the volume corresponds to a storage device, the information is configured to describe the virtual disk by virtue of being configured to describe the volume, and the information is configured to describe the volume by virtue of being configured to identify the volume as one of a parent volume, and a copy of the parent volume, and identify the parent volume, if the information identifies the volume as the copy of the parent volume; and storing the information at a storage network device, wherein the storage network device is configured to be logically coupled between a computer system and the storage device, the storage network device is configured to organize the storage device into the volume, the storage network device is configured to store the information at the storage network device in a form accessible by the computer system, the storage network device is configured to provide the computer system access to the information, in response to an input/output (I/O) interface command sent from the computer system, and the storage network device is configured to provide the access to the information without providing the computer system access to the virtual storage device, and without providing the computer system access to the storage device.