Storage Management Initiative - Specification
SAN Recovery - Storage Management Initiative - Specification
Storage Management Initiative – Specification (SMI-S) is a storage standard developed by Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) to “develop and foster the adoption of a highly-functional open interface for the management of storage networks.” SMI-S enables interoperability among heterogeneous storage vendor systems.
SMI-S defines Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) management profiles for storage systems. It is based on the Common Information Model and the Web-Based Enterprise Management standard defined by DMTF, Management via TCP/IP.
Profiles and Sub-profiles
The SMI specification includes profiles and sub-profiles. While a profile details the behavioral attributes of an autonomous management domain, a sub-profile describes part of the domain. SMI-S includes profiles for Arrays, Switches, Storage Virtualizer, Volume Management and many others.
Clients and Servers
SMI-S entities belong to two categories: clients and servers. Clients are management software applications that can reside anywhere on the network. Clients can be host-based applications, enterprise applications or SAN-based applications such as virtualization engines. Servers are the devices under management within the storage architecture. Examples are disk arrays, host bus adapters, switches, and tape drives.
SMI-S has been accredited by INCITS ANSI fast track program. The name of the formal standard was ANSI INCITS 388-2004, American National Standard for Information Technology – Storage. The currently available standard is SMI-S V1.2.1. More than 280 products from 18 SNIA member companies are certified as conformant to the latest standard.
