Patent ID: 8219724

Claim:
A method for use in flexibly managing input/output (I/O) operations based on application awareness, the method comprising: receiving an I/O operation directed to storage, the storage being provisioned in accordance with an application, the provisioning including selecting one or more default options in accordance with best practices of the application; based on the provisioning in accordance with the application, and based on a rejection template having a user configurable description of I/O acceptance criteria, performing an evaluation of the acceptability of the I/O operation; revising the rejection template; storing the I/O operation upon receiving the I/O operation; processing the I/O operation by a background process, wherein the background process compares metadata of the I/O operation with one or more I/O characteristics of an application aware configuration metadata; based on the processing, updating a status of the I/O operation, wherein the status indicates whether the I/O operation has been flagged for a violation; and updating an audit log, wherein the audit log stores the change in the status of the I/O operation.