Patent ID: 7630994

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a storage server, coupled to a network, having a mass storage device; a multi-appliance management application (MMA) coupled to the network to manage the storage server; and a server computer including a first agent coupled to the storage server and the MMA via the network, the first agent to scan a first subset of a directory structure of the storage server to collect information about a file stored on the storage server, and to combine information collected into a summary of a directory in which the file is located, the summary being accessible to the MMA, wherein the server computer, the MMA, and the storage server are separate devices, wherein the first agent operates independently of the storage server and the MMA, and wherein the first agent uses a file system different from a file system that the storage server uses, wherein the first agent is configured to scan and summarize the first subset of the directory structure of the storage server by scanning a directory in the storage server to identify child nodes in the directory; scanning each of the child nodes in the directory in the storage server to collect information about the child nodes; combining the collected information about the child nodes into the summary of the directory, wherein said combining occurs concurrently with said scanning, for different items of information; and storing the summary of the directory in a storage facility accessible to the MMA; the first agent including a directory thread to scan directories and a separate file thread to scan files, wherein the first agent is one of a plurality of agents on the network, a second agent of the plurality of agents being configured to scan and summarize a second subset of the directory structure of the storage server, wherein the second agent operates independently of the first agent, the storage server and the MMA.