Patent ID: 8631114

Claim:
A method for gathering information about a property comprising: receiving a request at a first node of a plurality of nodes forming a tree, wherein said plurality of nodes are data storage systems, said request being a query requesting information about the data storage systems in accordance with said property for a set of one or more objects defined in a portion of said plurality of nodes, said one or more objects in said set corresponding to one or more storage devices of one or more data storage systems represented by said portion of nodes, each object in said set performing monitoring of a storage device in connection with data storage system management, said property being a metric regarding any of an amount of storage or performance for said one or more storage devices and said request requesting collective information about said metric for said one or more storage devices; determining, by said first node, information about said property for objects of said set which are defined at said first node; determining, by each of other nodes other than said first node which are included in said plurality of nodes, information about said property for objects of said set which are defined at said each node; communicating, to said first node, information from said other nodes about said property for objects of said set which are defined at each of said other nodes; performing processing by said first node to produce final information representing information received from said other nodes and information determined by said first node regarding said property, wherein said request is forwarded by each node in the tree to child nodes of said each node, and said each node consolidates return information received from its child nodes, said return information representing information communicated from descendant nodes of said each node, wherein said tree includes a plurality of levels, said first node being a root node having a first set of child nodes, and at least one of the child nodes in said first set is a parent node having a second set of child nodes; and wherein said one or more storage devices are any of a logical storage device and a physical storage device and said metric is based on average I/O throughput, total storage capacity, used storage capacity and unused storage capacity.