US Patent 7162575 Adaptive implementation of requested capabilities for a logical volume

A method, system, and computer program product for adaptively implementing capabilities of a logical volume. If a particular capability is an inherent attribute of an existing storage device, the existing storage device is chosen to implement the volume. If the particular capability is not an inherent attribute of an existing storage device, one or more storage devices are selected and configured to provide the capability. If a capacity is requested for the logical volume and a storage device provides only a portion of the capacity, multiple storage devices having the capability are combined to provide the requested capability and capacity.