Patent attributes
Non-disruptive insertion of a storage appliance provides virtualized storage. A first logical device of a data storage system is exposed to a first host and a second host. A data store of the first logical device is uniquely identified using a signature. After inserting the storage appliance between the first host and the data storage system, the first logical device is presented, through the storage appliance, to the first host as a second logical device. After inserting the storage appliance between the second host and the data storage system, the first logical device is presented, through the storage appliance, to the second host as the second logical device. The first and second hosts identify the second logical device and the first logical device as the same logical device using the signature. The data store may be a virtual machine file system data store used by virtual machines on the hosts.
