The present invention provides a method and
system for mapping addressing of
SCSI devices between two SANs connected by a SAN
extender over a packet-based network with use of a
Fibre channel protocol over large distances. The present invention seamlessly interconnects graphically distinct SANs such that they operate as if they were local to one another by providing a means to generically and dynamically map
SCSI device addresses between two SANs. The present invention provides a method and
system for accessing a device from a host, wherein the host and device are in separate SANs interconnected by a
transport layer, and wherein the interface between said
transport layer and each of said SANs is a node. This method comprises, at each node, the steps of: mapping the device address into an intermediary device identifier, and mapping the intermediary device identifier into an address accessible by the host. Each node can be a
Fibre channel-to-
SCSI router, and the intermediary device identifier can comprise a node identifier and a generic device identifier. The
transport layer can be a packet-based network.