Storage Management Initiative - Specification

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 [http://webstore.ansi.org/ansidocstore/product.asp?sku=ANSI+INCITS+388-2004 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, Management via TCP/IP.

The main objective of SMI-S is to enable broad interoperability among heterogeneous storage vendor systems. The current version is SMI-S V1.2.1. Over 280 products from 18 SNIA Member companies are certified as conformant to SMI-S 1.2.1. [http://www.wbemsolutions.com/tutorials/snia/SMI/Marketing/smi-timeline.html SMI Timeline] from SMI Marketing Tutorial] A detailed tutorial for developing and marketing SMI-S compliant storage systems is provided at the WBEM Solutions site. [http://www.wbemsolutions.com/tutorials/snia/ SMI Tutorials] for developing and marketing SMI-S compliant storage systems.]

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.

MI 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 [http://www.wbemsolutions.com/tutorials/snia/SMI/Technical/smis-history.html 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.

ee also

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

References

External links

* [http://www.snia.org/smi/home SNIA SMI-S homepage] provides good material both at the overview and detail level.
* [http://www.snia.org/tech_activities/standards/curr_standards/smi SMI Specification] Approved Specifications of the SMI
* [http://groups.google.com/group/smi-s-developers-group SMI-S Developers Group] Provides information to assist developers working with SMI-S

Open Source Projects

* [http://openpegasus.com/ OpenPegasus] SMI-S Open Source Project
* [http://www.eclipse.org/aperi/ Aperi] Eclipse Aperi SMI-S Storage Manager