Patent ID: 8386709

Claim:
A method of protecting a RAID system from multiple failures, the method comprising: establishing a volume on a plurality of storage appliances, where the volume comprises a set of segments and the set of segments are stored on the plurality of storage appliances according to a random permutation of the plurality of storage appliances, wherein executing a command in conjunction with the volume comprises determining the random permutation by accessing a global table storing the random permutation, and the volume is associated with a first RAID level; implementing the first RAID level in conjunction with the volume, wherein implementing the first RAID level comprises storing a set of network parity (NP) segments, each NP segment corresponding to one or more of the set segments such that each NP segment does not reside on the same storage appliance as the corresponding one or more of the set of segments; and implementing a second RAID level within a first of the plurality of storage appliances.