Patent ID: 7577729

Claim:
A storage area network (SAN), comprising: a plurality of storage devices connected to a fabric; a plurality of host systems connected to the fabric; and one or more of the plurality of host systems configured to: execute one or more applications; dynamically obtain during runtime a plurality of proxy objects that each provide a proxy for a different respective storage service provided by and running on another one of the plurality of host systems, and store the plurality of proxy objects on said one or more of the plurality of host systems; wherein each different respective storage service is configured to access one or more of the plurality of storage devices to perform one or more storage functions; and in response to receiving requests from the one or more applications, access the respective storage services through their respective proxy objects to perform the one or more storage functions on the storage devices such that each of the one or more applications cannot differentiate whether the storage service requested by that application is running locally on the same one of the plurality of host systems as that application or remotely on another one of the plurality of host systems; wherein each application of the one or more applications is configured to access one of the proxy objects as though that proxy object were the corresponding storage service running locally on the same host system as that application.