Patent ID: 8516211

Claim:
A storage management system, comprising: a shared store, accessible by each of a plurality of parties, that stores a first version of management data indicating the storage allocations of the shared store and a second version of management data indicating the storage allocations of the shared store, wherein the first version of management data is more up-to-date than the second version of management data; a plurality of parties, each party having access to said shared store and each party comprising: a data processor; a cache that stores data generated by the data processor and the second version of management data indicating storage allocations of the shared store; and a control unit that manages a first data transfer between the cache and the shared store, wherein said control unit operates independently without interfering with the access of another party to said shared store and wherein the control unit separates the data into data blocks for transfer to the shared store, the control unit being embedded in each party of said plurality of parties in a shared access network and comprising: a manager that identifies one or more available storage locations to receive and store the data in the shared store and allocates the data to the one or more available storage locations to render allocated data, wherein allocating to the one or more available storage locations comprises determining the size of the data blocks and allocating the data blocks to a selected address and offset in the shared store; an interface that manages a second data transfer of the allocated data to the one or more available storage locations; and a locking mechanism that generates a lock and locks the shared store during the first data transfer and the second data transfer to ensure that each party obtains exclusive access by preventing access from other parties of the plurality of the parties and that data integrity is preserved.