METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROVISIONING STORAGE RESOURCES USING AN EXPERT SYSTEM THAT DISPLAYS THE PROVISIONING TO A USER

An improved technique uses an expert system to provide automated provisioning of resources for a storage system. Along these lines, a user submits values of a set of provisioning targets parameters in a administrative interface screen to a storage processing device. The expert system uses these values to form a set of facts within an expert system stored on the storage processing device that includes a knowledge base having a set of logical rules and an inference engine. The storage processing device then inputs these facts and logical rules into the inference engine which is configured to fire logical rules having preconditions that match the facts. The actions of these logical rules then provide content for the provisioning of the storage resources, which are displayed to the user or used for automatic storage provisioning operations.