Virtualized storage systems

Abstract

Described herein is a virtualized storage system (VSS), for sharing a storage cluster comprising a plurality of storage devices, among multiple hosts. The virtualized storage system comprises a plurality of virtual host bus adapters (vHBA), wherein each vHBA is connected to a host, though a standard based host bus interface. The VSS further comprises a storage fabric switch for connecting the plurality of the vHBAs with the storage cluster through a cluster of storage controllers to facilitate transfer of data and commands between the hosts and the storage devices, wherein the storage fabric switch provide storage services for each host, the storage services comprising at least one of backup, replication and thin-provisioning. The storage fabric switch further comprises a command processing engine (CPE) to map commands received from the plurality of vHBAs, in a virtual addressing domain, to a physical address of a mapped storage controller for execution.