The advances in Internet technology have led to

tremendous improvements in business, education, and science and

have changed the way we think, live, and communicate.

Information exchange has become ubiquitous by the possibilities

offered through modern technologies. We are able to offer

information 24 hours a day through our web sites and can leave

messages every time and from anywhere in the world.

This change in communication has led to new challenges.

Enterprises have to deal with an information amount that doubles

every year. The technological foundation to cope with this

information explosion is given by Storage Area Networks (SANs),

which are able to connect a great number of storage systems over

a fast interconnection network. However, to be able to use the

benefits of a SAN, an easy-to-use and efficient management

support has to be given to the storage administrator. In this

paper, we will suggest new storage management concepts and we

will introduce a new management environment that is able to

significantly reduce management costs and increases the

performance and resource utilization of the given SAN

infrastructure.