Patent ID: 7069468

Claim:
A storage area network comprising: a plurality of front-end interfaces, each respective front-end interface providing access, to one or more associated targets, to one of a plurality of connected servers; a resource management application configured to determine to which of the plurality of front-end interfaces to move any target associated with a first front-end interface; wherein the plurality of front-end interfaces are distributed across a plurality of storage controllers which are loosely-coupled to provide an arrangement including a master storage controller and one or more slave storage controllers the resource management application configured to execute on the master storage controller; and wherein the resource management application, in determining to which of the plurality of front-end interfaces to move any target associated with a first front-end interface, is configured to base the determination on at least one of: a controller identity of a particular storage controller with which the first front-end interface is associated, and a physical location of the particular storage controller.