Patent Document ID: 20110252134
Application ID: 13158204
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A computer-implemented method for forecasting electronic data storage requirements, the method comprising: receiving a user selection of at least one of a range of internet protocol addresses and a set of host names; identifying from among a first plurality of computing device entities located on a network a second plurality of computing device entities that satisfies the user selection; collecting with an agentless protocol interface storage-related information from each of the second plurality of computing device entities, wherein said collecting comprises querying each of the second plurality of computing device entities using a network protocol, and wherein the storage-related information comprises at least one of disk usage, disk utilization, performance and failure rate; outputting to a display a list of available predetermined scenarios for modeling the collected storage-related information; receiving a user-selected scenario from the list of available predetermined scenarios; forecasting, based on the user-selected scenario and the collected storage-related information, storage requirements of the second plurality of computing device entities for a future time period; and outputting the forecasted storage requirements to a graphical user interface.