Patent ID: 7275107

Claim:
A method of determining a world wide name assigned to a port in a data storage system for use in enabling a host computer to communicate with the data storage system, without requiring that the data storage system be in communication with the host computer at the time of the determination, the method comprising the steps of: receiving information related to a data storage system from in response to a prompt for such information; presenting a list of ports at the data storage system based on the received information; receiving information related to the selection of at least one port from the list in response to the prompt; determining a world wide name for each port for which information was received and presenting the world wide name for each port, wherein the information related to the selected data storage system is a serial number of the data storage system and wherein the generation of the world wide name at the host computer is implemented without ever using the host computer to communicate with the data storage system to retrieve computer readable information from the data storage system.