Patent ID: 7533181

Claim:
A client apparatus for data access on a storage device connected to a storage area network, the apparatus comprising: a first network interface configured to allow the apparatus to communicate with a storage server; a second network interface configured to allow the apparatus to communicate with a storage device on a storage area network; a storage management client configured to communicate with the storage server and coordinate use of the storage device; a storage agent comprising a metadata management module configured to minimize metadata processing on the apparatus by communicating metadata to the storage server to be exclusively stored in a centralized metadata database on the storage server, the metadata comprising a file data characteristic, a device characteristic, a media characteristic, a positioning indicator, and an append position indicator, associated with file data corresponding to a client, and stored on a specified volume; the storage agent receiving a write request from the client; the storage agent further comprising a volume management module that sends a volume access request for the specified volume to the storage server, receives an available volume notification for the specified volume from the storage server, and sends a mount request to a storage device to mount the specified volume; and the storage agent further configured to communicate a volume attribute request to the storage server, receive the metadata from the centralized metadata database of the storage server, write to the file data on the specified volume using the metadata, and send updated metadata to the storage server.