Patent ID: 8443078

Claim:
A method of selecting agents for gathering information from a set of fabrics in a storage area network, comprising: performing fabric discovery operations on the set of fabrics using each agent connected to the storage area network, the fabric discovery operations producing capability information of each agent within the set of fabrics; generating groups of equivalent subsets of agents capable of collecting information for the set of fabrics, the equivalent subsets of agents grouped based on agent capabilities relative to each fabric in the storage area network, including for each fabric: populating a capability matrix with data for each agent reporting on the fabric, the capability matrix providing an indication of a set of capabilities of each agent for the fabric; identifying subsets of agents having overlapping capabilities for the fabric as indicated in the capability matrix; performing a communication check on each agent in each subset of identified agents; and adding each subset of identified agents to a group within the groups of equivalent subsets responsive to successful performance of the communication check for the subset of identified agents; selecting, for the set of fabrics, equivalent subsets of agents from the groups of equivalent subsets of agents; and executing fabric probes on the set of fabrics using the selected equivalent subsets.