A system for updating management entities or devices in a computer system
network with configuration change information from the devices being
managed. The management entities are configured to discover, monitor and
configure managed devices, such as storage systems, connected to the
network. Preferably, the managed devices include a comparator which can
track changes made to the managed device configuration or properties and
report that change back to the various management entities. In this way,
the management entities can keep track of the configurations of the
various devices that they manage, even though they might not be
responsible for issuing the configuration change. This can be
accomplished even when managed devices developed by different
manufacturers according to different standards or protocols are involved.