Patent ID: 7363418

Claim:
A method of performing data storage operations between a host computer and a data storage system, comprising: establishing a volume matrix including respective pluralities of host devices on the host computer and virtual devices and logical devices on the data storage system, each host device being mapped to a corresponding virtual device creating a corresponding host device/virtual device (H/V) pair, each H/V pair having a user-visible primary address range by which it serves as a primary H/V pair on a primary path for a corresponding one of the logical devices, and each of selected H/V pairs also having one or more user-hidden secondary address ranges and serving as a secondary H/V pair on a respective secondary path for a corresponding other of the logical devices; at the host computer upon occurrence of a storage request directed to a primary H/V pair for a target logical device, (a) directing the storage request along a selected one of the primary path and secondary paths to the target logical device based on expected performance criteria, and (b) upon directing the storage request along a selected secondary path, performing a first translation of the storage address to the secondary address range of the H/V pair of the selected secondary path; and at the data storage system in response to receiving the storage request from the host computer, (a) if the storage request was received on the primary path for the target logical device, then performing the storage request on the target logical device using the storage address of the storage request, and (b) if the storage request was received on the selected secondary path for the target logical device, then (i) performing a second translation of the storage address of the storage request to an address range of the target logical device, and (ii) performing the storage request on the target logical device using the translated storage address.