ALLOCATION-UNIT-BASED VIRTUAL FORMATTING METHODS AND DEVICES EMPLOYING ALLOCATION-UNIT-BASED VIRTUAL FORMATTING METHODS

摘要

In various embodiments,.the present invention provides virtual disk formatting by intermediate devices including: (1) a storage shelf router and the storage shelf in which the storage-shelf is included, to external computing entities, such as disk-array controllers and host computers; (2) an I/O controller; and (3) a storage-bridge device. The virtual-formatting methods of the present invention are based on allocation units, each allocation unit comprising a consecutive sequence of logical blocks and an additional pad region that together map to, and exactly align with, a corresponding consecutive sequence of device blocks.