Patent ID: 8069269

Claim:
A method of processing input/output (I/O) requests in a computer system, comprising: in response to receipt of a first I/O request from a host to read a requested content unit stored on at least one content addressable storage (CAS) system of the computer system, wherein the CAS system includes a plurality of virtual pools, each virtual pool of the plurality of virtual pools storing content units that are logically segregated from content units stored in other of the plurality of virtual pools, determining, prior to accessing the CAS system to obtain the requested content unit, at least one of the plurality of virtual pools of the CAS system in which the requested content unit is stored, wherein each virtual pool from the plurality of virtual pools is assigned to at least one content source before receiving from the at least one content source any I/O requests to read content, wherein the at least one content source includes at least one of: a host, an application program or a storage system, and wherein the at least one virtual pool storing the requested content unit is accessed by a content source allocated to the at least one virtual pool, the content source being permitted to access only the at least one virtual pool assigned to the content source; forwarding the first I/O request to a set of storage resources that include the at least one of the plurality of virtual pools to which the first I/O request is directed; accessing the requested content unit from the set of storage resources; and returning the requested content unit to the host.