Patent ID: 8706905

Claim:
A system, comprising: a computing system operationally coupled to a first switch via a first adapter; a first storage system coupled to the first switch via a second adapter; and a second switch operating as a fabric switch and coupled to the first switch and to a second storage system; wherein the second switch allocates addresses from an address range to the first adapter and the second adapter specifying a domain, area and port identifier value for the first adapter and the second adapter such that the first switch is able to route information between the computing system, the first storage system and the second storage system; wherein the first switch upon receiving a frame from the second switch uses a dual stage selection mechanism for determining a port for routing the frame to the first storage system and to the computing system; wherein the dual stage selection mechanism includes a route cache that stores a port identifier group entry corresponding to a destination identifier entry and a plurality of steering tables, where each table entry includes a port identifier associated with a port identifier group entry and each steering table is associated with a domain area value; wherein based on a destination identifier of the received frame, an associated port identifier group entry from the route cache is selected; a steering table is selected based on a domain area value in the destination identifier of the frame and the port is selected from the steering table based on the port identifier group entry from the route cache; and wherein the first switch uses a first routing mechanism and a second routing mechanism using N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) for selecting a port to route a frame that is received from the computing system, where the first routing mechanism is used to route the frame to the first storage system and the second routing mechanism is used to route the frame to the second storage system.