METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR LOAD BALANCING PROCESSING OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION

Mechanisms and techniques for processing information in a management application, such as a storage area network management application, include a load manager, a set of distributed agents that collect information, and a set of store process that store the agent-collected information. The load manager receives load information from a plurality of store processes. The load information indicates a relative processing load for respective store processes. The load manager determines store process availability based on the received load information. The load manager receives a store assignment request from an agent that has an agent transaction to perform with a store process and assigns a store process of the plurality of store processes for the agent to use to perform the agent transaction based on the determined store process availability. In addition, other embodiments include the use of agent transaction weights to allow the store process and/or the load manager to further load-balance agent transactions between store processes.