Patent ID: 6961836

Claim:
A method of processing requests of a host system on one or more storage elements, each storage element having one or more storage partitions, including steps of: mapping the storage partitions of each storage element to generate one or more merged partitions of the storage elements wherein the step of mapping is performed within a mapping controller communicatively coupled between the hosts systems and the storage elements; communicatively coupling the merged partitions to the host system to process the requests of the host system wherein the requests of the host systems are received by the mapping controller and wherein each request is directed to an identified merged partition mapped by the mapping controller; generating in the mapping controller one or more corresponding I/O requests each directed from the mapping controller to a corresponding storage element that comprises a portion of the identified merged partition; and processing the requests as read and write requests to the storage partitions of each storage element wherein the processing is performed within a storage controller within each storage element and wherein the storage controller is coupled to one or more storage devices within the storage element.