Patent ID: 7685165

Claim:
A computer-based method for implementing policy-based management for legacy data comprising the steps of: receiving an input; preparing a query to locate one or more data objects that match said received input; executing said query and locating said one or more data objects; identifying a policy associated with said identified one or more data objects, each data object stored on a respective associated storage device among a plurality of different storage devices, said plurality of different storage devices comprising combinations of: storage device in a storage area network (SAN), network attached storage (NAS), legacy storage device, or a remotely located storage device; probing each associated storage device and determining at least one property related to the policy, said property comprising any of the following: a block-level functionality associated with encrypted data blocks, a file system-level functionality comprising a file system creation time, and an application-level functionality associated with a database integrity constraint; identifying any associated storage devices in which the at least one property violates the policy; outputting any identified storage devices in which that at least one property violates the policy identify an additional storage device having the one property that satisfies the policy; and migrating those data objects, stored on associated storage devices in which the at least one property violates the policy, to the additional storage device.