Patent ID: 8327080

Claim:
A local computerized node, comprising: a communications interface to connect to a host computer and a set of external computerized nodes; a local cache; and a controller coupled to the communications interface and the local cache, the controller being constructed and arranged to: receive, through the communications interface, a block of data from the host computer, the block of data including data sub-blocks, store the block of data, as a dirty cache block, in the local cache, and perform, through the communications interface, a set of external caching operations to cache a set of sub-blocks in the set of external computerized nodes, each external caching operation caching a respective sub-block of the set of sub-blocks in a cache of a respective external computerized node, the set of sub-blocks including (i) the data sub-blocks of the block of data from the host computer and (ii) a set of checksums derived from the data sub-blocks of the block of data from the host computer.