Patent ID: 6944712

Claim:
A method of managing requests of a host system to a plurality of storage elements, each storage element comprising a plurality of storage devices configured as one or more physical storage partitions configured for providing data storage and each storage element further comprising a storage controller coupled to the storage devices, the method including steps of: mapping, within the host system, a portion of the physical storage partitions to define at least one logical storage partition such that the host system can directly access the portion via the requests wherein the portion includes at least two physical storage partitions associated with different storage elements each having an associated storage controller; processing, within the host system, the requests of the host system to the portion in response to mapping the portion; and switching the requests to the portion in response to processing the requests such that the storage controller associated with each of the at least two physical storage partitions each processes part of the requests to the portion independent of the other storage controllers.