Patent ID: 7353358

Claim:
A method for generating storage utilization reports in a managed information environment comprising: identifying storage categories in a storage system, the storage categories corresponding to a hierarchy and indicative of different levels of demarcation of storage within the storage system, each hierarchical storage category indicative of storage capacity reserved at that level, reserved storage being unavailable to other users of the storage, the levels of demarcation defining a progression, each storage category inclusive of previous storage categories, the storage categories including physical storage, configured storage, allocated storage, logical volumes, file systems and used storage; computing, for each of the identified hierarchical storage categories, a storage configuration indicative of storage usage at that level; computing, within each computed storage configuration, a storage allotment corresponding to used and available storage for the particular storage system; subdividing the storage allotment into accessible storage, accessible with no volume group considerations and accessible with no file system/database, the accessible storage indicative of online storage capability; and presenting, for a plurality of the identified storage categories, the computed storage allotment, each level of demarcation of storage categories inclusive of previous levels of demarcation, the storage allotment indicative of consumed storage attributable to users for that level, further comprising, for each storage category: computing the storage quantity consumed within that category; displaying the total storage quantity, the consumed quantity and the available quantity; and computing a trending analysis by: identifying storage areas of a storage array, the storage areas corresponding to user demand; and computing, for a plurality of storage categories, utilization of the storage quantity over time, the utilization indicative of the ratio of a consumed storage quantity to unused storage quantity for a particular storage area.