Various forms of storage systems are used today. These forms include direct attached storage (DAS) network attached storage (NAS) systems, storage area networks (SANs), and others. Network storage systems are commonly used for a variety of purposes, such as providing multiple users with access to shared data, backing up data and others.
A storage system typically includes at least one computing system executing a storage operating system for storing and retrieving data on behalf of one or more client computing systems (“clients”). The storage operating system stores and manages shared data containers in a set of mass storage devices.
Storage systems are being used extensively in virtual environments where a physical resource is time-shared among a plurality of independently operating processor executable virtual machines. Typically, storage space is presented to a virtual machine as a virtual hard disk (VHD) file. A storage drive (for example, C:\) is then presented to a user via a user interface within a virtual machine context. The user can use the storage drive to access storage space to read and write information. Continuous efforts are being made for efficiently presenting and managing storage space in a virtual environment.