Patent ID: 8180846

Claim:
A method for determining status of execution of a SAN management command by an agent on a remote host in a storage area network (SAN) at a command manager operating in a SAN management computer system, the method comprising: receiving at the command manager a SAN management command submission from a SAN application that directs operation of an agent on a remote host to manage resources in the SAN, each command submission indicating the SAN management command to be executed as a transaction on the agent and indicating that the SAN application is to be notified of the status of the SAN management command; creating at the command manager a transaction identifier associated with the SAN management command; registering at the command manager at least one of a plurality of the SAN applications as an application to be notified of the execution status of the SAN management command by the agent in association with the transaction identifier; returning the transaction identifier associated with the SAN management command from the command manager to the SAN application; issuing the SAN management command to the agent for execution by the agent to perform a management function specified by the command in association with a resource in the SAN; sending at least one status request from the command manager to the agent to determine a status of execution of the SAN management command by the agent according to a status entry in a status table based on the transaction identifier, the status entry storing current execution state of the command by the agent in association with the transaction identifier; in response to the at least one status request sent from the command manager to the agent, receiving at least one status response from the agent indicating the status of the execution of the SAN management command by the agent; and returning the status of execution of the SAN management command indicated within the at least one status response received at the command manager from the agent to the SAN application that submitted the command to the command manager and having the associated transaction identifier.