Storage Management Initiative - Specification

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SMI-S, or the Storage Management Initiative - Specification, is a storage standard developed and maintained by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). It has also been ratified as ANSI standard ANSI INCITS 388-2004. SMI-S is based upon the Common Information Model and the Web-Based Enterprise Management standards defined by the Distributed Management Task Force.

The main objective of SMI-S is to enable broad interoperability among heterogeneous storage vendor systems. The current version is SMI-S V1.1.0. Over 280 products from 18 SNIA Member companies are certified as conformant to SMI-S 1.0.2.^[1] A detailed tutorial for developing and marketing SMI-S compliant storage systems is provided at the WBEM Solutions site.^[2]

Contents 1 Basic concepts 2 SMI timeline 3 See also 4 References 5 External links 6 Open Source Projects

[edit] Basic concepts

SMI-S defines DMTF management profiles for storage systems. The complete SMI Specification is categorised in profiles and sub-profiles. A profile describes the behavioral aspects of an autonomous, self-contained management domain. SMI-S includes profiles for Arrays, Switches, Storage Virtualizer, Volume Management and many other domains. In DMTF parlance, a provider is an implementation for a specific profile. A sub-profile describes part of the domain, which can be common part in many profiles.

At a very basic level, SMI-S entities are divided into two categories:

• Clients are management software applications that can reside virtually anywhere within a network provided they have a physical link (either within the data path or outside the data path) to providers.
• Servers are the devices under management within the storage fabric.

Clients can be host-based management applications (e.g., storage resource management, or SRM), enterprise management applications, or SAN appliance-based management applications (e.g., virtualization engines). Servers can be disk arrays, host bus adapters, switches, tape drives, etc.

[edit] SMI timeline

• 2000 - A collection of computer data storage industry leaders led by Roger Reich begun building an interoperable management backbone for storage and storage networks (code named Bluefin) in a small industry consortia sponsored by VERITAS software called the Partner Development Process.
• 2002 — Blufin was donated by the consortia to the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and was later renamed to Storage Management Initiative - Specification or SMI-S. SMI-S 1.0 publicly announced by the SNIA.
• 2003 — The Storage Management Initiative led by Roger Reich launched formal industry wide specification development, interoperability testing and demonstrations programs, as well as conformance testing systems and certifications.
• 2004 — SMI-S 1.0.2 becomes an ANSI standard. Starts the initial development of SMIS 1.1.0.
• 2005 — SMI-S 1.0.2 submitted to ISO. Releases SMI-S 1.1.0.

[edit] See also

• CIM — Common Information Model
• WBEM — Web-Based Enterprise Management
• SNIA — Storage Networking Industry Association

[edit] References

1. ^ SMI Timeline from SMI Marketing Tutorial
2. ^ SMI Tutorials for developing and marketing SMI-S compliant storage systems.

[edit] External links

• SNIA SMI-S homepage provides good material both at the overview and detail level.
• SMI Specification Approved Specifications of the SMI
• SMI-S Developers Group Provides information to assist developers working with SMI-S

[edit] Open Source Projects

• OpenPegasus SMI-S Open Source Project
• Aperi Eclipse Aperi SMI-S Storage Manager