Patent Document ID: 7984074
Application ID: 11970728

Base Claim:
1. A computer program product, stored on a non-transitory computer readable storage medium, having a data structure stored thereon for adaptive storage element deployment in a storage area network, the data structure comprising: attributes having associated attribute values of an object to be deployed in the network, the attribute values indicative of network characteristics of the object; identified attribute definitions in a predetermined set of top level objects adapted to be compared to the attributes of the object to be deployed to determine a matching top level object, each of the top level objects in the set of top level objects having an entity category, matching top level objects being in the same entity category and sharing an attribute definition; successive attributes corresponding to the matching top level object and indicative of matching object generic attributes corresponding to matching attributes of the object to be added, the successive attributes defining a plurality of levels, the data structure adapted to receive attribute values for entity categories at successive levels; object specific attribute definitions corresponding to the unmatching attributes adapted to be defined and classified for creating attribute definitions in the data structure corresponding to the unmatching attributes; and object generic attribute definitions adapted to receive the associated attribute values corresponding to the object to be deployed, the attribute definitions for receiving attribute value pairs indicative of the attribute definition and corresponding attribute value, and the successive ancillary attributes defining a plurality of level, the data structure adapted to receive attribute values for entity categories at successive levels of the plurality of levels.

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Claim 4:
4. The computer program product of claim 1 wherein the object to be deployed is a manageable entity in a storage area network, the manageable entity having an element specification file indicative of object specific attribute definitions.