Patent ID: 8261017

Claim:
A system for implementing distributed RAID, comprising: a plurality of storage appliances, each storage appliance coupled to each of the other storage appliances of the plurality of storage appliances, each storage appliance including: a processor; a data store; a computer readable medium comprising instructions executable to: receive a command corresponding to a first segment of a first volume from a host, wherein: the first volume comprises a first set of segments, and the first set of segments of the first volume are stored on the plurality of storage appliances according to a first storage appliance order, where the first storage appliance order is a first ordering of the plurality of storage appliances including each of the plurality of storage appliances exactly once, and wherein redundancy data corresponding to a first RAID level implemented in conjunction with the first volume is stored on each of the plurality of storage appliances, such that for each segment of the first volume one or more corresponding redundancy segments comprising the redundancy data associated with that segment of the first volume does not reside on the same storage appliance as the corresponding segment of the first volume; determine a first storage appliance of the plurality of storage appliances, wherein the first storage appliance corresponds to the first segment; and if the first storage appliance is the storage appliance which received the command execute the command with respect to the first segment, and if not, forward the command to the first storage appliance.