Patent ID: 7831681

Claim:
A method comprising: providing, using a processor, a virtual worldwide name (vWWN) nameservice for responding with a unique vWWN to a request for a vWWN from an initiator node in a Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN), wherein a first mapping maps a static worldwide name (WWN) to a dynamic Fibre Channel identification address (FC_ID) of the initiator node using a directory service, the vWWN nameservice maintains a vWWN table comprising a second mapping between table entries of a plurality of application services, including both hardware and software components of a plurality of Fibre Channel devices required to provide at least one of the plurality of application services to the initiator node, and an associated vWWN for each application service, the request is received by a Fibre Channel port coupled to the processor, the request comprises an identifier associated with a characteristic of resources in the SAN, the characteristic comprising one or more of a disk group identifier, a disk volume identifier, and an application identifier, and, the vWWN nameservice responds to the request received from the initiator node by determining if the identifier of the request matches contents of a field in one or more of the entries in the vWWN table comprising the second mapping, and providing the initiator node with the vWWN associated with a determined matching entry.