Storage area network having fabric-attached storage drives, SAN agent-executing client devices, and SAN manager that manages logical volume without handling data transfer between client computing device and storage drive that provides drive volume of the logical volume

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing program code of a storage area network (“SAN”) manager, the program code of the SAN manager executable by a processor of a computing device to perform operations comprising:

• receiving, at the SAN manager, a request to allocate and mount a logical volume on a client computing device connected to a fabric, the SAN manager connected to the fabric;
• in response to receiving the request, selecting, by the SAN manager, a storage drive of a plurality of storage drives connected to the fabric and sending a first command to the selected storage drive to provision a drive volume on the selected storage drive, the plurality of storage drives comprising fabric-attachable storage drives;
• and
• sending, by the SAN manager, a second command to a SAN software agent on the client computing device instructing SAN software agent on the client computing device to create and mount the logical volume using the drive volume on the selected storage drive,
• wherein the SAN manager manages the logical volume without handling data transfer between the client computing device and the selected storage drive.

An apparatus comprising:

• a processor;
• a memory that stores code executable by the processor to:
• receive, at a storage area network (“SAN”) manager, a request to allocate and mount a logical volume on a client computing device connected to a fabric, the SAN manager connected to the fabric;
• in response to receiving the request, select, by the SAN manager, a storage drive of a plurality of storage drives connected to the fabric and sending a first command to the selected storage drive to provision a drive volume on the selected storage drive, the plurality of storage drives comprising fabric-attachable storage drives;
• and
• send, by the SAN manager, a second command to a SAN software agent on the client computing device instructing the SAN software agent on the client computing device to create and mount the logical volume using the drive volume on the selected storage drive,
• wherein the SAN manager manages the logical volume without handling data transfer between the client computing device and the selected storage drive.