Patent ID: 8054763

Claim:
A method of migrating at least one selected switch in a storage area network, the method comprising: analyzing the I/O traffic to identify patterns in the I/O traffic of the switch; and forecasting future I/O traffic of the switch based on one or more identified patterns in the I/O traffic; determining appropriate timing for migration based on the identified patterns and administrator inputs; processing the storage area network configuration data to identify the storage network physical and logical access paths to the switch to create a first connectivity map; generating a second connectivity map based on the first connectivity map and administrator inputs; migrating the switch based on the second connectivity map and the appropriate timing, comprising: determining I/O traffic on the switch to be migrated and the redundant switches in the storage area network; determining the capacity of the redundant switches and determining at least one alternate switch for I/O traffic routing; routing I/O traffic from the switch to be migrated to the alternate switch; removing the switch to be migrated from the storage area network; and connecting the new switch in the storage area network based on the second connectivity map.