Patent ID: 8069415

Claim:
A storage area network (SAN) management system, including a CPU and memory, to generate perspectives of a SAN topology, the SAN management system including: a SAN manager program to monitor a storage area network (SAN), said SAN manager program capable of generating an adjacency matrix, said SAN manager program capable of facilitating direct data transfers between storage devices without server intervention, and said SAN manager program utilizing information gathered in the generating of prior SAN perspectives, a SAN management database linked with the SAN manager program, wherein the SAN management database maintains information identifying devices included within the SAN and connections between the devices; a plurality of sensor agents positioned within devices included within the SAN, wherein the sensor agents gather information associated with events occurring within the SAN and provide the gathered information to the SAN manager for inclusion within the SAN management database; and a topology viewer linked to the SAN manager to generate a user requested topology perspective according to data included within the SAN management database and data associated with a previously requested topology perspective, said topology viewer including memory for storing information pertaining to previously requested topology perspectives, said topology viewer enabled to generate a view of physical connections given a selection of a logical connection.