Storage management system having common volume manager

摘要

A storage management system in which a plurality of volume providers maps logical storage volumes onto one or more storage devices within a stand-alone computer or within a storage network. A common volume manager executing on a computer within the storage network selectively communicates commands to one or more of the volume providers in order to control the storage devices. The inventive storage management system seamlessly integrates management of the vendor-specific volume providers. The common volume manager provides a common application programming interface (API) by which applications are able to control and monitor hardware and software volume providers without requiring detailed knowledge of the volume providers or the underlying storage devices. The common volume manager aggregates response information from the volume providers and communicates the aggregated information to the software application that issued the storage management request. The interface is extensible so as to support provider-specific storage management requests and conforms to a component object-model (COM) interface.