Patent ID: 7472052

Claim:
A method of simulating a target storage configuration for a computer system, wherein the target storage configuration may comprise multiple storage units, the method comprising: receiving a storage command from an application running on the computer system into a storage protocol stack on the computer system, wherein said storage protocol stack is part of an operating system of the computer system and runs in kernel mode; intercepting the storage command within the storage protocol stack by a kernel simulator module incorporated into the storage protocol stack; forwarding the intercepted storage command from the kernel simulator module to a userland simulator module running in user mode; generating a response to the storage command in the userland simulator module, said response emulating the behavior of the target storage configuration; sending the generated response from the userland simulator module to the kernel simulator module; returning the response from the kernel simulator module to the application via the storage protocol stack, wherein said returned response comprises data which provides an appearance to the application that the response came from a storage configuration being simulated by the userland simulator module; and changing the target storage configuration being simulated without changing the kernel simulator module.