Patent ID: 8914567

Claim:
A computer method for providing storage management to a system of a plurality of virtual machines running on a set of physical machines in a data center, the method comprising: storing data in a plurality of physical storage devices of the data center, a physical storage device of the plurality of the physical storage devices representing a physical address space and the physical address space being logically divided into a plurality of physical storage spaces; providing an abstraction of the plurality of the physical storage devices to the plurality of virtual machines, wherein the abstraction of the plurality of the physical storage devices is represented by a plurality of corresponding virtual disk images, a virtual disk image of a physical storage device of the plurality of the physical storage devices represents a virtual address space of the physical address space of the physical storage device, and each of the plurality of virtual machines are associated with one of a plurality of storage management system drivers; and configuring a master service in one of the set of physical machines to manage the abstraction of the plurality of the physical storage devices and storage space allocation to the plurality of virtual machines by maintaining a system-wide mapping to translate identifications for virtual disk images to a corresponding position in the plurality of physical storage devices for the plurality of virtual machines running on the set of physical machines.