The storage controller 102 allows the one or more hosts 106 to perform input/output (I/O) operations with logical storage maintained by the storage controller 102. The physical storage corresponding to the logical storage may be found in one or more of the storage devices 108, 110 and/or cache 104 (also referred to as a two-tier cache) of the storage controller 102.

The storage controller 102 and the hosts 106 may comprise any suitable computational device including those presently known in the art, such as, a personal computer, a workstation, a server, a mainframe, a hand held computer, a palm top computer, a telephony device, a network appliance, a blade computer, a processing device, a controller, etc. In certain embodiments, the storage controller 102 may be comprised of a plurality of servers. The plurality of servers may provide redundancy because if one server undergoes a failure from which recovery is not possible, an alternate server may perform the functions of the server that failed. Each of the plurality of servers may be referred to as a processing complex and may include one or more processors and/or processor cores.

The storage controller 102 and the one or more hosts 106 may be elements in any suitable network, such as, a storage area network, a wide area network, the Internet, an intranet. In certain embodiments, storage controller 102 and the one or more hosts 106 may be elements in a cloud computing environment.