Patent ID: 8775499

Claim:
A network manager system for managing a data storage network, comprising: one or more processors; memory operatively coupled to said one or more processors; program instructions in said memory for programming said one or more processors to perform network manager operations, said operations comprising: performing a discovery agent capability determination that determines discovery capabilities of two or more discovery agents in said data storage network; detecting, prior to discovery execution, whether a discovery capability overlap condition exists wherein said discovery capabilities are overlapping due to some of said agents being capable of discovering the same information from the same network device; computing agent discovery assignments prior to discovery execution based on said discovery agent capability determination and according to whether a discovery overlap condition exists; wherein said agent discovery assignments are computed such that (1) no network device is discovered more than once by different discovery agents seeking the same information, (2) one or more agents are not permitted to perform full discovery of information due to one or more other discovery agents being assigned to discover the same information, and (3) no duplicate discovery information is generated; and collectively, said agent discovery assignments being computed as a subset of said agent discovery capabilities in response to said discovery capability overlap condition being detected to reduce overlapping discovery.