Abstract: Methods and systems are disclosed for relocating data in a physical storage pool comprising a plurality of storage tiers having differing performance characteristics, the physical storage pool being mapped into one or more logical units, each logical unit comprising a plurality of logical slices of data storage. The methods and systems can involve receiving a relocation list, the relocation list including, for each of a plurality of logical slices, a slice identifier, a temperature value, and a current physical location, determining a destination tier for each logical slice on the relocation list, evaluating for each logical slice on the relocation list a performance gain expected to be achieved by moving the logical slice from its current physical location to a new location in the destination tier, and relocating data in a logical slice from its current physical location to the new location based on the evaluation.

Abstract: A system and method provides for establishing a direct TCP/IP connection between a workstation and a storage system independent of a server to which the storage system is connected. A SCSI request is encoded with tags identifying the request as a SCSI request, and the request is structured with a request IP identification. The tagged SCSI request is then sent to the storage system, and the request IP identification of the SCSI request is returned from the target device to the workstation to thereby allow exchange of SCSI requests over a TCP/IP connection directly between the workstation and the storage system, independent of involving the server.