Patent ID: 8566502

Claim:
In a computer system including a host computer connected via a switch to a storage system having storage devices that are represented as one or more logical storage units, the host computer having a virtual machine running therein and a virtual disk for the virtual machine stored as a file in at least two non-adjacent locations in the one or more logical storage units, a method of offloading storage operations to the switch, said method comprising: receiving at the switch, a single instruction for carrying out a storage operation on at least first and second segments of the file that represents the virtual disk for the virtual machine running in the host computer, wherein the first and second segments of the file are stored in non-adjacent locations in the one or more logical storage units and the single instruction identifies a list of blocks including a first block corresponding to the first segment and a second block corresponding to the second segment; and generating commands for the storage system at the switch that enable the storage system to carry out the storage operation on the first and second segments.