Patent ID: 8924658

Claim:
A method comprising; monitoring, by a storage management system, a storage system to determine whether the storage system is satisfying a service level objective for an application; determining, by the storage management system, from said monitoring, that the storage system is not satisfying the service level objective for the application; and in response to a determination that the storage system is not satisfying the service level objective: referencing scenario data corresponding to the service level objective for the application; identifying a virtual storage appliance configuration and a virtual storage appliance action corresponding to the scenario data; instantiating, by the storage management system, a virtual storage appliance according to the virtual storage appliance configuration; causing the virtual storage appliance action to be performed by the virtual storage appliance to satisfy the service level objective, the virtual storage appliance comprising a virtual machine on a hypervisor configured to execute the virtual machine; modifying a data access path between the application and a physical resource to pass through the virtual storage appliance; monitoring the virtual storage appliance and the application to detect a change in resource usage; rerouting the data access path such that the application directly accesses the physical resource based upon a detected change in resource usage; and shutting down the virtual storage appliance after rerouting the data access path.