Patent ID: 7386758

Claim:
A storage system for storing data as objects comprising: a plurality of storage devices; and a disk controller for controlling said storage devices, wherein each of said objects includes attribute which defines attributes of the object and data, wherein said storage devices are configured to implement a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) architecture, wherein each of said storage devices is formatted to include a plurality of stripes each having a predetermined length and at least one logical unit (LU) is formed by all or a portion of one or a plurality of said storage devices, wherein each object is stored on said LU such that an attribute of the object is stored in the head of a stripe and data of the object is stored just after the attribute, wherein when another object is to be stored, an attribute of the another object is stored at a head of the next stripe and data of the another object is stored just after the attribute in the next stripe, said stripe which includes attribute and data or data is referred to as a data stripe, wherein according to the RAID architecture being implemented, parity data is calculated based on certain ones of the data stripes, said parity data is stored in a stripe of a storage device and such stripe is referred as a parity stripe, and wherein the RAID architecture being implemented is defined according to a RAID configuration table which includes a plurality of entries each including a port identifier ID, a logical unit number (LUN), a storage device (disk) ID, a RAID level, and a stripe size, thereby defining for each combination of port ID and LUN, a logical storage device which is formed by all or a portion of one or a plurality of said storage devices and a RAID level and stripe size to be used on said logical storage device.