Patent ID: 8874696

Claim:
In a storage system with a data store having a plurality of storage disks, a method of responding to application requests for data comprising the steps of: managing the storage system through a control station in communication with the data store, the control station having a plurality of client applications for managing the storage system, each client application, when executed, issuing requests for data from the data store by issuing communications protocol requests to a communications protocol port; providing a common cache service coupled between the plurality of client applications and a command service, the command service providing access to the data store, the client applications, command service, and common cache service communicating via a communications protocol; receiving by the common cache service a communications protocol request for data from a client application on the communications protocol port; returning requested data to the client application if the requested data is stored by the common cache service; otherwise, passing the communications protocol request to the command service to retrieve the data from the data store on a different communications protocol port; receiving the data from the command service; and returning the data to the client application.