Patent ID: 8838793

Claim:
A system comprising: a plurality of storage devices; a storage area network (SAN) fabric comprising a plurality of fabric components for coupling one or more remote systems to the storage devices; and a central system having a SAN management server configured to identify a file system for which storage is to be automatically provisioned, wherein the one or more remote systems comprise the file system, identify available device storage, wherein the available device storage is storage in the plurality of storage devices that is available to be used by the file system, monitor an amount of available storage in the file system, and in the event the amount of available storage in the file system decreases below a predetermined amount, automatically provision additional storage to the file system, wherein the automatic provisioning of additional storage comprises selecting one or more available storage entities, wherein the available device storage comprises a plurality of available storage entities, the selecting comprises selecting the one or more available storage entities from the plurality of available storage entities, and the one or more available storage entities match storage used by the file system in at least one quality of service attribute among a set of quality of service attributes, and applying a new security measure to the additional storage, wherein the new security measure matches a security measure of the storage used by the file system.