A native data collection component may be implemented as a tool, appliance, application and/or utility, and including physical and/or logical implementations thereof. The native data collection component may be responsible for data orchestration, data collection, and aggregation and distribution of collected data from among multiple sources of a storage area network (SAN). The native data collection component is not required to be installed as an agent on any data source of the SAN, and the native data collection component may be independent of a particular data source and act as an independent performance characteristic collection mechanism. In an embodiment, the native data collection component may include three devices/sub-components: a data orchestration device, a data collection interface and a data aggregation and distribution device. Each sub-component may be service based and communication with each service may be done using state-less protocols.