Patent ID: 8041543

Claim:
A method for analyzing input/output (I/O) workloads of components in a storage area network (SAN), comprising: determining host bus adapter (HBA) port to storage port oversubscription ratios and HBA port to inter-switch link (ISL) oversubscription ratios in the SAN; selecting a subset of the components for monitoring based on the HBA to storage port oversubscription ratios and the HBA port to ISL oversubscription ratios; continuously monitoring the subset of the components and storing I/O statistics of the subset of the components; and forecasting expected I/O workloads of the subset of the components based on current I/O workloads of the subset of the components and respective I/O workload threshold values of the subset of the components, wherein the current I/O workloads are associated with the I/O statistics.