Scsi device emulation in user space facilitating storage virtualization

A server adapted for providing storage virtualization, comprising:

• a computing environment including an OS kernel and a user space;
• a target mode transport driver resident in the OS kernel communicating with a data storage client connected to a port of the server;
• an emulation module resident in the user space operable to emulate one or more data storage devices;
• a pass-through module resident in the OS kernel receiving a data packet corresponding to the one or more data storage devices from the target mode transport driver and passing the received data packet from the OS kernel to the user space for use by the emulation module in emulating the one or more data storage devices.

A SCSI device emulation method, comprising

• running an emulation module in user space of a computer system, wherein the emulation module is adapted to process SCSI commands and emulate at least one SCSI storage device;
• receiving a SCSI command from a SCSI client with a kernel-resident transport driver;
• communicating the SCSI command within a data structure to the emulation module in the user space;
• processing the SCSI command with the emulation module;
• and
• operating the kernel-resident transport driver to provide a response to the SCSI client based on the processing of the SCSI command.