Patent ID: 8224947

Claim:
A server computer for a storage area network (SAN) residing on a data network, the SAN comprising a plurality of storage devices providing logical storage volumes where hosts access the logical storage volumes via the SAN by exchanging SAN protocol messages carried by packets of a network communication protocol used for general communication via the data network, the server computer comprising: a SAN module implementing the SAN protocol and handling exchanges of SAN protocol messages between the server computer and the storage devices, 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 given logical volume is accessed by a given host via SAN protocol messages according to the logical volume's SAN location path; a name service module storing associations between SAN location paths of corresponding logical volumes on the SAN and text names of the logical volumes, respectively, wherein the given logical volume on the SAN is registered with the name service by the name service storing a text name for the given logical volume in association with the SAN location path of the given logical volume; and the server computer receiving from the given host a lookup request comprising one of the text names of one of the logical volumes, 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.