Patent ID: 8886758

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: discovering entities in a first portion of a data center network, the discovered entities including at least one storage end point, at least one server end point, and at least one server application instance, wherein discovering the entities comprises: determining a presence of a plurality of end points in the first portion of the data center network, and identifying at least one of said at least one storage end point and said at least one server end point based on communication with at least one of the plurality of end points; and examining information associated with the discovered entities to determine relationships that exist between pairs of entities in the first portion of the data center network, wherein examining the information comprises: examining meta information of a storage end point to identify a plurality of logical disks located in storage associated with the storage end point, and examining data within each logical disk of the plurality to identify one or more server end points having access to that logical disk and one or more server application instances as storing data within that logical disk; and generating a specification of the relationships that exist between pairs of entities in the first portion of the data center network based on results of the examining.