Patent ID: 8041683

Claim:
A method for identifying log files at a SAN infrastructure server from hosts in a heterogeneous storage area network (SAN) comprising: identifying at the SAN infrastructure server a set of hosts in the SAN, each host having at least one log file and operable for log file collection; each host including an agent configured to manage resources in the SAN: computing, at the SAN infrastructure server, for each host in the identified, set of hosts, a query type indicative of the manner of locating the log files stored in various locations on the host according to an application executing on the host or agent that generated the log files depending on the manageable entities responsive to the host; determining at the SAN infrastructure server a path operable to locate the log files on each of the hosts in the set of hosts according to the identification of each of the hosts in the set of hosts; determining at the SAN infrastructure server an expression indicative of a file specification according to the identification of each of the hosts in the set of hosts, the file specification denoting the log files; generating at the SAN infrastructure server a script file for discovering the log files on each of the hosts in the set of hosts according to the query type, path and expression, wherein the hosts need not support similar file systems, wherein generating a script file further comprises generating a task definition indicative of operations for gathering the collective set of log files corresponding to the identified set of hosts by: traversing at least one log file designators; enumerating, for each log file obtained in the traversal, a task operable to retrieve the corresponding log file; and storing each of the enumerated tasks in a task definition file; transferring the script file from the SAN infrastructure server to each host in the identified set of hosts for execution at each respective host in the identified set of hosts; and receiving at the SAN infrastructure server, in response to execution of the transferred script on each host in the identified set of hosts, identification of each log file type at each respective host in the identified set of hosts.