Patent ID: 7694058

Claim:
A storage router for providing virtual local storage on storage devices to a host device, comprising: a first controller operable to connect to and interface with a first transport medium; a second controller operable to connect to and interface with a second transport medium, wherein at least one of the first transport medium and the second transport medium is a serial transport medium; and a supervisor unit coupled to the first and second controllers, the supervisor unit operable to: maintain a map that comprises host identifications for host devices connected via the first transport medium and representations of at least a portion of a storage device connected via the second transport medium, the map associating subsets of storage space on the storage devices with the host devices; and for a request received from a host, access the map to determine the storage space associated with the requesting host using the requesting host's host identification and allowing the request from the requesting host to pass through to the requested subset of storage space if the requesting host is mapped to such requested subset of storage space, wherein the request is a native low level block protocol when received from the requesting host and is forwarded to the storage device containing the storage space as a native low level block protocol request.