Patent ID: 7676564

Claim:
A domain controller server for a storage area network (SAN) residing on a data network, the SAN comprising a plurality of heterogeneous storage devices providing logical storage volumes and hosts accessing the logical storage volumes via the SAN, wherein the hosts and storage devices communicate using a standardized SAN protocol that defines storage communications on the SAN and which is stacked on an underlying network communication protocol for general communication via the data network, the domain controller server comprising: a SAN application programming interface (API) module on the domain controller server, the SAN API module implementing the SAN protocol and handling SAN exchanges between the domain controller server and the storage devices linked to the SAN for storing computer-readable data, wherein the storage devices have corresponding globally unique SAN addresses according to the SAN protocol, wherein logical storage volumes in the SAN have corresponding SAN location paths defined according to the SAN protocol, each logical volume's SAN location path including the SAN address of the logical volume's storage device and a globally unique SAN identifier of the logical volume, wherein a logical volume is accessed by a host via the SAN protocol according to the logical volume's SAN location path, and wherein the hosts access the storage devices with SAN protocol and the logical volumes of the SAN appear to the hosts as though the logical volumes were local storage devices of the hosts; the domain controller server linked to the SAN and providing a name service to the hosts and the storage devices, the name service not part of the SAN protocol and operating separately from the SAN, the name service comprising associations between SAN location paths of corresponding logical volumes on the SAN and text names of the logical volumes, respectively, the text names having been entered by human input, wherein when a new logical volume first becomes available on the SAN the domain controller server automatically recognizes the new logical volume and in response obtains a new text name for the new logical volume on the SAN and registers with the name service the SAN location path of the new logical volume in association with the new text name; and the domain controller server receiving from the host a lookup request comprising one of the text names of one of the logical volumes, the lookup request not sent via the SAN protocol, and in response to the request the name service on the domain controller server using the requested text name to find, among the associations, the SAN location path of the requested text name, and returning the SAN location path to the host thereby enabling the host to access the logical volume via the SAN with the SAN protocol.