Patent ID: 8561203

Claim:
A system comprising: a computer processor configured to execute a mixed protection module at a virtualized host adapter, the virtualized host adapter configured to communicate with a plurality of guest operating system images, the guest operating system images configured to execute on a plurality of virtual machines, and at least one of the guest operating system images lacking support for data integrity protection, the mixed protection module performing: receiving a request for a write operation from a requestor, the request including write data, and the requestor one of the guest operating system images; determining whether data integrity protection is required for the write operation; determining whether data integrity protection is supported by the requestor responsive to determining that data integrity protection is required for the write operation; calculating a data integrity protection value responsive to determining that data integrity protection is required but unsupported by the requestor, the write data encoded with the data integrity protection value prior to writing the data; applying data integrity protection values to the write data prior to writing the data responsive to determining that the data integrity protection is supported by the requestor, the data integrity protection value provided by the requestor; and writing the data to an external storage device.