Patent ID: 8046446

Claim:
A system comprising: one or more volume clients; one or more physical block devices coupled to the volume clients via a network; and a plurality of volume servers separate from and interposed between said clients and said block devices, wherein said volume servers are coupled to the block devices via a network; a volume server manager coupled to said plurality of volume servers via a network, wherein the volume server manager is configured to: designate the plurality of volume servers as a volume server set with an associated volume server set management policy; verify that storage in each of the one or more physical block devices is accessible to each volume server in the volume server set in accordance with the volume server set management policy; and designate a first volume server of the volume server set to: aggregate storage in the one or more physical block devices into a logical volume; make the logical volume accessible to the one or more volume clients; and make configuration information for the logical volume accessible to each other volume server of the volume server set; designate the first volume server of the volume server set as an active volume server, wherein the active volume server is configured to perform virtualization functions for the volume server set; wherein in response to a failure, the volume server manager is configured to designate a second volume server as an active volume server; and wherein the second volume server is configured to disallow access to the logical volume from the first volume server upon a detection of the failure.