Patent ID: 7747836

Claim:
A method for operating a computer data storage system, comprising: connecting one or more clients to a plurality of ingress ports of a storage switch; connecting one or more data storage devices to a plurality of egress ports of the storage switch, wherein at least one egress port of the plurality of egress ports is connected to the one or more data storage devices via a storage unit; storing virtualization mappings in a selected ingress port of the plurality of ingress ports, wherein the virtualization mappings are provided to the storage switch by a multi-protocol engine; receiving a data request from a client at the selected ingress port of the storage switch, wherein the data request comprises metadata reflecting a logical view of requested data, and wherein the selected ingress port is configured to process a SAN request; in the event that the logical view of the requested data has a mapping in the selected ingress port of the plurality of ingress ports of the storage switch, forwarding the data request to a selected egress port of the plurality of egress ports of the storage switch to be processed at the selected egress port with the mapping; and in the event that the logical view of the requested data does not have the mapping in the selected ingress port of the storage switch, forwarding a mapping request multi-protocol engine, the multi-protocol engine generating the mapping of the logical view of the requested data, and forwarding the data request from the multi-protocol engine to the selected egress port of the storage switch to be processed at the selected egress port.