Simultaneous state-based cryptographic splitting in a secure storage appliance

A method of managing I/O requests in a secure storage appliance, the method including:

• receiving an I/O request at the secure storage appliance, the I/O request associated with a volume, the volume associated with a plurality of shares stored on a plurality of physical storage devices;
• determining whether a block of data referenced by the I/O request is present in a buffer;
• transferring the block of data to a buffer and associating the block of data with a transfer state;
• determining whether the block of data in the buffer is updated;
• and
• processing the block of data.

A secure storage appliance comprising;

• a plurality of buffers, each buffer capable of holding a block of data having a state selected from among a plurality of states;
• a programmable circuit capable of accessing the plurality of buffers, the programmable circuit configured to execute program instructions to:
• receive an I/O request, the I/O request associated with a volume, the volume associated with a plurality of shares stored on a plurality of physical storage devices communicatively connected to the secure storage appliance;
• determine whether a block of data referenced by the I/O request is present in a buffer;
• transfer the block of data to a buffer among the plurality of buffers;
• determine whether the block of data in the buffer is updated;
• and
• process the block of data.

A secure storage appliance comprising:

• a plurality of buffers, each buffer capable of holding a block of data having a state selected from among a plurality of states;
• a programmable circuit capable of accessing the plurality of buffers, the programmable circuit configured to execute program instructions to:
• receive a block of data associated with a volume, the volume associated with a plurality of shares stored on a plurality of physical storage devices;
• store the block of data in a buffer from among the plurality of buffers;
• associate the buffer with a state corresponding to a status of the block of data;
• process the block of data by performing at least one cryptographic operation on the block of data;
• and
• update the state of the block of data upon completion of processing the block of data.