System and method for managing provisioning of storage resources in a network with virtualization of resources in such a network

摘要

A method and system for managing allocation of storage resources, comprises the steps of: the storage network management system allocating one or more virtual data storage volumes for use by a host computer; the storage network management system presenting the virtual data storage volumes to the host computer as representative of available physical storage on the one or more storage arrays, but not allocating physical data storage for the virtual data storage volumes, wherein the virtual data storage volumes can include regions that are either allocated to physical storage or are unallocated to physical storage; the storage management system creating a data storage pool that includes the one and the more data storage arrays; and upon receiving a write request to the virtual data volume that covers an unallocated region of the volume, the storage network management system allocating physical storage from the storage pool for the virtual data volume.