Patent ID: 7617320

Claim:
A process for validating a state of a storage area network (SAN), comprising the steps of: defining a SAN access path policy representative of SAN logical access paths, said SAN logical access paths defining end-to-end access relationships between an application on a server, a sequence of one or more switches and physical links in the SAN, and data LUNs stored on storage devices in the SAN and having for the logical access paths an associated set of logical access path attributes consisting of at least one of a number of hops within a valid logical access path, a level of end-to-end redundancy for a valid logical access path, and a number of allocated ports for a valid logical access path, wherein the SAN access path policy includes a list of valid access paths and an associated set of access path attributes for the valid access paths, collecting configuration information from devices of the SAN, standardizing formats of the configuration information and reconciling conflicts, processing the collected configuration information to identify the SAN logical access paths, and computing the associated access path attribute values, defining a state of the SAN based on SAN logical access path attribute values associated with the SAN logical access paths, the attribute values consisting of at least one of a number of hops within a valid logical access path, a level of end-to-end redundancy for a valid logical access path, and a number of allocated ports for a valid logical access path, and comparing the identified SAN logical access paths and computed access path attribute values with the list of valid access paths and associated set of access path attributes for the valid access paths in the SAN access path policy to identify any logical access path discrepancies or violations, thereby validating the state of the SAN.