Patent ID: 7779368

Claim:
A data storage management system, comprising: a data store; a data storage manager communicatively coupled to the data store and configured to allocate and use logical and physical storage elements of the data store via an application instance that defines a set of areas within the data store that are used by an application specific storage solution; and a graphical user interface that exposes data storage in the data store in application specific storage units and raw storage units, wherein an application specific storage unit is expressed in terms specific to an application using the data being stored such that different types of applications have different terms used to express application specific storage units, wherein the graphical user interface comprises a representation illustrating data store allocation across two or more applications, wherein the representation comprises an adjustable slider associated with each of the two or more applications, the slider configured to modify the allocated storage for each of the two or more applications, and wherein adjusting a first adjustable slider to cause adjustment of allocated storage expressed in application specific storage units for a first application also causes allocated storage expressed in application specific storage units for one or more other applications to be adjusted accordingly.