Patent ID: 7865596

Claim:
A method of allocating resources associated with a storage system, the method comprising: providing, a switch element comprising a first configurable set of processor elements to process storage resource connection requests, a second configurable set of processor elements capable of communications with the first configurable set of processor elements to receive, from the configurable set of processor elements, storage resource connection requests representative of client requests and to route the requests to external storage devices, and a configurable switching fabric interconnected between the first and second sets of processor elements for receiving at least a first storage resource connection request from one of the first set of processor elements, determining a determined one of the second set of processors for processing the storage resource connection request, automatically configuring the storage resource connection request in accordance with the protocol utilized by the determined one of the second set of processors, and forwarding the request for storage resource connection to the determined one of the second set of processors for routing to external storage devices based on the content load of the request; specifying, with the switching element, a first specified set of network connections from the storage system to one or more networks; specifying, with the switching element, a specified first set of storage resources within the storage system, each of the first set of specified storage resources being referenced by a physical address; and associating, with the switching element, the specified first set of network connections and the specified first set of storage resources to define a first secure virtual storage domain (SVSD), the associating including: configuring, with the switching element, a network layer to forward requests from the specified first set of network connections only to the specified first set of storage resources based on the request processing load of each of the specified first set of storage resources; and configuring the specified first set of storage resources to accept requests only from the specified first set of specified network connections; assigning a network address to each of the specified first set of storage resources; and mapping, with the switching element, from each of the network addresses to each of the physical addresses so that each of the storage resources can be referenced by the network address.