Patent ID: 8276191

Claim:
A computer-implemented method, comprising: generating, at a first host executing a first storage-management application, an authorization setting indicating those provisioning operations, if any, that a user is permitted to perform on a data storage entity of a storage system; wherein the data storage entity is any type of logical container of data used by the storage system to store data; and sending the authorization setting from the first host to the storage system to enable the storage system to provide the authorization setting to a second storage-management application executing on a second host when a user initiates a request to perform a provisioning operation on the data storage entity via the storage-management application; and wherein, after sending the authorization from the first host to the storage system, the second host analyzes an indicator to verify that a locally-cached copy of the authorization setting is valid and analyzes the authorization setting to verify that the user associated with the request has the proper authority to perform the requested provisioning operation.