Patent ID: 8024309

Claim:
A method comprising: using a storage system management application to manage information relating to operation of a storage system that includes a storage server; using a first agent which is physically separate from the storage system management application to scan a first subset of a structure of data stored in the storage system, to collect information about the first subset; using a second agent which is physically separate from the storage system management application to scan a second subset of a structure of the data stored in the storage system, to collect information about the second subset; and using the storage system management application to access the information collected about the first subset and the information collected about the second subset and to generate a human-readable report based thereon, wherein the first agent and the second agent are each configurable to scan a specified configurable portion of the structure of data at a particular level of granularity, and wherein the first subset of the structure of data and the second subset of the structure of data are determined based on an expected time for the first agent and the second agent to complete the scans.