System and method for supporting file and block access to storage object on a storage appliance

1. A method for enabling application data stored on a disk of a storage system to be accessible by a client as either a file or logical unit number (lun), comprising:

organizing the application data as a virtual disk (vdisk) comprising a plurality of inodes including a prefix inode, a lun inode and a suffix inode;

storing the application data in the lun inode;

storing disk semantics in the prefix and suffix inodes;

enabling access to the application data in accordance with a dual access path technique by accessing the vdisk as a file over network attached storage (NAS) protocols or as a lun over storage area network (SAN) protocols;

in response to accessing the vdisk as a file, filtering the disk semantics stored in the prefix and suffix stream inodes from the application data stored in the lun inode; and

returning only the application data.

2. A method for enabling application data stored on a disk of a storage system to be accessible by a client as either a file or logical unit number (lun), comprising:

organizing the application data as a virtual disk (vdisk) comprising a plurality of inodes including a prefix inode, a lun inode and a suffix inode;

storing the application data in the lun inode;

storing disk semantics in the prefix and suffix inodes;

enabling access to the application data in accordance with a dual access path technique by accessing the vdisk as a file over network attached storage (NAS) protocols or as a lun over storage area network (SAN) protocols; and

in response to accessing the vdisk as a lun, returning the application data stored in the lun inode and the disk semantics stored in the suffix and prefix stream inodes.

3. A system configured to enable application data stored on a storage device of a storage system to be accessible as a file or logical unit number (lun), the system comprising:

a storage operating system adapted to implement a file system that logically organizes the application data as a virtual disk (vdisk), the vdisk embodied as a plurality of transgender data containers that allow access via a network attached storage (NAS) protocol or a storage area network (SAN) protocol, wherein one of the plurality of transgender data containers is a file containing a database and having an associated partition table.

4. The system of claim 3 wherein one of the plurality of transgender data containers is a virtual logical disk (VLD) comprising a file with an embedded header that contains information enabling the file to be simulated as a disk.

5. The system of claim 4 wherein the file is a Network File System (NFS) file.

6. The system of claim 3 wherein the file is a Network File System (NFS) file.

7. The system of claim 3 wherein the file is a Common Internet File System (CIFS) file.

8. A method for enabling application data stored on a disk of a multi-protocol storage appliance to be accessible as a file or as a logical unit number (lun), comprising:

creating a link from a file inode of the file to a virtual disk (vdisk);

creating an attributes inode for the vdisk;

creating prefix and suffix inodes for the vdisk;

converting a file type of the file inode from regular to vdisk, thereby enabling the vdisk to be accessed as a file or lun; and

populating the suffix inode with a duplicate label.

9. The method of claim 8 further comprising populating the attributes inode with attributes, such as a subtype of the vdisk.

10. The method of claim 8 further comprising populating the prefix inode with disk semantics, such as one of a partition table, a virtual logical disk header and a label.