Patent ID: 8825963

Claim:
A method, comprising: configuring a data storage system to include multiple distinct storage entity types, the distinct storage entity types including at least a block type, a slab type, a region type, a volume type and an extent type; in the data storage system, defining multiple of slabs of the slab type, each of the slabs including a set of blocks of the block type from one or more physical storage devices; in the data storage system, defining multiple regions of the region type to contain data, each of the regions including one or more of the slabs, storing the data at the one or more of the slabs, and storing the data as multiple logical extents, each of the logical extents being a logical container of a portion of the data, and allocated at least a portion of the one or more slabs allocated to the region, wherein each of the slabs is allocated to no more than one of the regions; and in the data storage system, maintaining, by a volume management component, multiple volumes of the volume type, each of the volumes including one or more of the logical extents from one or more of the regions, wherein layouts of the logical extents within the regions are not visible to the volume management component.