Patent ID: 7389382

Claim:
A method for facilitating block level access operations to be performed at a remote volume via a wide area network (WAN), the block level access operations being initiated by at least one host which is a member of a first local area network (LAN), the first LAN including a first block cache mechanism configured or designed to cache block data in accordance with a block level protocol, the method comprising: receiving a first block level access request from a first host on the first LAN, wherein the first block level access request corresponds to a block level read request for accessing a desired portion of block data corresponding to a first location in the remote volume; caching a first portion of block data in the first block cache mechanism in response to the first block level access request, wherein the caching of the first portion of block data is implemented using a block level protocol; determining that a second portion of the desired portion of block data is cached in the first block cache mechanism; retrieving, using a block level protocol, the second portion of the desired portion of block data from the first block cache mechanism; and providing the retrieved second portion of the desired portion of block data to the first host.