Patent ID: 6862648

Claim:
A storage system, comprising: a host interface for receiving input/output (“I/O”) transactions from a host device, said I/O transactions complying with a first interface protocol; a storage device interface for transmitting I/O transactions to a plurality of storage devices according to a second interface protocol; and an interface adapter coupled to the host interface and the storage device interface, wherein said interface adapter is configured to receive I/O transactions from the host interface, to convert the I/O transactions from the first interface protocol to the second interface protocol, and to transmit the converted I/O transactions to the storage device interface, and said interface adapter is further configured to receive I/O transactions from the storage device interface, to convert the I/O transactions from the storage device interface from the second interface protocol to the first interface protocol, and to transmit the converted I/O transactions to the host interface, and wherein the interface adapter further includes a state machine comprising a software emulation layer, wherein the software emulation layer comprises one or more software routines configured to operate as an emulation layer between the host interface and the storage device interface.