Patent ID: 7165057

Claim:
A method for resolving a storage object's absolute location within a first storage environment to grant access to the storage object, comprising: receiving a request to access a storage object residing on a non-volatile storage device of the first storage environment; receiving a storage object reference which corresponds to the storage object; determining an initial storage management stack level associated with the storage object reference; in response to determining the storage object reference is not an absolute reference, iterating through one or more additional storage management stack levels beginning with the initial stack level, wherein each storage management stack level identifies one or more relative extents of storage objects according to a different level of abstraction; and translating the storage object reference through each iteration into one or more level-specific relative extents at each storage management stack level until one or more absolute extents are obtained, wherein the one or more absolute extents comprise the storage object's absolute location within the first storage environment.