Patent ID: 7310742

Claim:
A method, comprising: sending a diagnostics request from a management server to a client linked in communication with the management server via a network, the diagnostics request received via an out-of-band (OOB) communication channel for the client that is transparent to an operating system running on the client, wherein the diagnostic request and a reply containing the diagnostic data are sent as an XML-(extended markup language) based messages; submitting one or more diagnostics commands identified by the diagnostics request to a disk drive identified by the diagnostics request and hosted by the client; receiving diagnostic data from the disk drive in response to said one or more diagnostic commands; returning the diagnostic data to the management server via the client OOB communication channel; packaging the diagnostics request as a first XML file contained in a first Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) message; transporting the first SOAP message over the Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) to the client; processing the first SOAP message to extract the first XML file; and extracting information identifying the one or more diagnostic commands and the disk drive for which diagnostic data are to be obtained from the first XML file.