Patent ID: 8555029

Claim:
A storage system comprising a plurality of physical storage devices constituting a physical storage space and controlled by a plurality of storage control devices constituting a storage control layer, said layer operatively coupled to a plurality of hosts and the plurality of physical storage devices, and is operable to handle a virtual representation of the physical storage space, wherein the storage control layer comprises: a) a first virtual layer interfacing with the plurality of hosts, operable to represent a logical address space characterized by logical block addresses and available to said plurality of hosts, said first virtual layer characterized by an Internal Virtual Address Space (IVAS) and further operable, responsive to IO requests addressed to one or more logical block addresses, to provide protocol-dependent translation of said logical block addresses into respective IVAS addresses; and b) a second virtual layer interfacing with the physical storage space constituted by the plurality of physical storage devices, said second layer is operable to represent an actual physical space available to said plurality of hosts and is characterized by a Physical Virtual Address Space (PVAS), wherein each address in said Physical Virtual Address Space is configured to have at least one corresponding address in the Internal Virtual Address Space; and wherein said second virtual layer is further operable, to provide further translation of PVAS addresses corresponding to said respective IVAS addresses into addresses in physical address space, said translation provided in a protocol-independent manner; wherein the storage system is further operable to: configure a new logical unit with a desired protection scheme by assigning the new logical unit to a virtual partition configured in accordance with said desired protection scheme; and assign resources required for the desired protection scheme responsive to a configuration request for configuring the new logical unit.