A detectibility service for a storage infrastructure manager (SIM) operating on a storage area network (SAN) is disclosed directed to addressing a situation where there may be multiple sources of duplicate or contradictory information to the SIM about the presence and condition of an element in the SAN. The service can account for both authoritative as well as nonauthoritative sources of information in a SAN, which participate in the discovery process scanning for SAN elements. Both authoritative and nonauthoritative sources of information can be used to report a given SAN element during a probe, taking advantage of the more efficient processing of information from authoritative sources to override information from nonauthoritative sources regardless of the order in which the various scans may occur.