Patent ID: 8255803

Claim:
A method for use in facilitating storage pool provisioning, the method comprising: providing a sequence of user interface screens for configuring one or more physical devices of a data storage system for use in connection with provisioning a storage pool, wherein each user interface screen provides a different level of abstraction of the data storage system based on a different level of user proficiency associated with each user interface screen; by the sequence, receiving a provisioning specification describing a RAID type and capacity; receiving best practices information describing one or more sets of data storage system best practices; and by the sequence, presenting a proposal based on rules including business logic for performing configuration processing in connection with initialization of said data storage system to configure a first portion of said one or more physical devices for use with the storage pool, wherein the best practices information is used in producing said proposal, wherein the provisioning specification is translated into a best practices configuration based on the best practices information.