Patent ID: 7552115

Claim:
In a computing environment comprising at least a processor and a memory, a method comprising: receiving a first request for a first storage report, the first request including an indication of information that is to be determined by scanning at least a portion of a namespace on a storage volume; receiving a second request for a second storage report, the second request including an indication of information that is to be determined by scanning the same portion of the namespace on the storage volume; consolidating the first request and the second request, such that the storage volume information indicated in the first request and the storage volume information indicated in the second request are both simultaneously ascertainable from a single storage volume scan; planning a storage volume scan based on: the consolidated requests for storage reports corresponding to the namespace, the storage volume scan being configured to scan the namespace for both the storage volume information indicated in the first request and the storage volume information indicated in the second request simultaneously in a single scan; and one or more activity hints; overriding the storage volume scan based on the consolidated requests and the activity hints, such that the storage volume scan is based on one or more user inputs; performing the storage volume scan as indicated by the user inputs to simultaneously ascertain both the storage volume information indicated in the first request and the storage volume information indicated in the second request; and generating a plurality of reports based on the scanned information, each report in the plurality of reports corresponding to a request for information including at least one of the first request and the second request.