Abstract: Systems, methods, and computer readable medium for allocating physical storage in a disk array are disclosed. According to one aspect, the subject matter described herein includes a method for allocating portions of storage area of a storage array. The method includes receiving, from a requesting entity, a request for allocation of a portion of storage area of a storage array, the storage array comprising a plurality of storage entities and a plurality of data buses for transferring data to and from the plurality of storage entities, wherein the plurality of storage entities are organized into at least one logical unit, wherein each logical unit is subdivided into at least one slice. In response to receiving the request for allocation, at least one slice is selected for allocation for use by the requesting entity, based on anticipated system resource utilization during access to data to be stored in the storage array.

Abstract: Systems, methods, and computer readable medium for optimizing storage allocations based on system resources are disclosed. According to one aspect, the subject matter described herein includes a method for dynamic, policy-based allocation of system resources. The method includes specifying a plurality of system resource collections for representing sets of like system resources and their dependencies. An order in which the collections are to be evaluated during selection of a resource is also specified. A policy for determining the best resource within each collection is also specified. Statistics about the system resources in the collections are maintained. A request for a resource is received. In response to receiving the request, the collections are evaluated in the specified order. The best resource is selected from each collection based on the dependencies, prior selections, and statistics to implement the policy.

Abstract: According to one aspect, the subject matter described herein includes a method for optimizing the number of data writes to virtually provisioned logical units of a physical data storage array. The method is performed at a virtual provisioning layer associated with a physical storage array and includes receiving, from a client, a first write request for writing data to a first portion of a first data block of a virtually provisioned logical unit (VLUN) of the physical data storage array, wherein the size of the first portion is less than the size of the first data block. In response to receiving the first write request, a combined write request is generated from the virtual provisioning layer, where the combined write request is for writing the first portion of the data from the received write request and a second portion of fill data such that a size of the first portion and the second portion is equal to a size of the first data block.