Patent ID: 7987311

Claim:
A storage router for providing virtual local storage on remote storage devices, comprising: a first controller operable to connect to a first transport medium, wherein the first medium is a serial transport medium; a second controller operable to connect to a second transport medium; and a processing device coupled to the first controller, wherein the processing device is configured to: maintain a map to allocate storage space on the remote storage devices to devices connected to the first transport medium by associating representations of the devices connected to the first transport medium with representations of storage space on the remote storage devices, wherein each representation of a device connected to the first transport medium is associated with one or more representations of storage space on the remote storage devices; control access from the devices connected to the first transport medium to the storage space on the remote storage devices in accordance with the map and using native low level block protocol, further comprising: for a device connected to the first transport medium, identifying LUNs for storage space allocated to that device in the map; presenting to that device only the identified LUNs as available storage space; and processing native low level block requests directed to the identified LUNs from that device to allow access to the storage space associated with the identified LUNs.