Patent ID: 7930361

Claim:
A method for access and management of remote data comprising: receiving from a host a standard read-oriented input-output instruction including a persistent image update (PIU) parameter; granting access to the host to read data from a shared computer-readable medium storing an image shared by the host and one or more other hosts in response to: a determination that a value of the PIU parameter indicates a request by the host to read data from the shared computer-readable medium; and a determination that the host is authorized to read data from the shared computer-readable medium; and forwarding the instruction to a second computer-readable medium storing an image unique to the host in response to at least one of: a determination that a value of the PIU parameter indicates a request by the host to read data from the second computer-readable medium; and a determination that the host is not authorized to read data from the shared computer-readable medium.