Patent 7724677 was granted and assigned to Hitachi on May, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The invention is intended to provide a connectivity checking technology to make it easier to check the connectivity of data communication paths in an IP storage system. The target computer 20 of the storage system 10 transmits an ICMP echo request to an initiator computer 70 through a prescribed IP port 110 in the storage system 10, and determines whether or not the connectivity is normal between the target computer 20 and initiator computer 70 through the prescribed IP port 110 based on a reachable status of the ICMP echo reply from the initiator computer 70.