Storage Management Initiative Specification

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) defines a standard that is used within IBM Spectrum® Control to create and develop a universal open interface for managing storage devices including storage networks.

For information about SMI-S, see http://www.snia.org.

SNIA has fully adopted and enhanced the Common Information Model (CIM) standard for storage management in its Storage Management Initiative - Specification (SMI-S). SMI-S was launched to create and develop a universal open interface for managing storage devices including storage networks. SMI-S provides:
  • A comprehensive specification for the management of heterogeneous storage and storage area networks (SANs).
  • The information available to a WBEM client from an SMI-S compliant CIM server (provider).
  • Profiles organized by:
    • Storage
    • Fabric
    • Host
    • Common profiles and subprofiles
  • An object-oriented CIM and XML-based interface for managing SAN devices, services, and fabrics.
  • An initial discovery, which is SLP based.

The idea behind SMI-S is to standardize the management interfaces so that management applications can utilize these and provide cross-device management. This means that a newly introduced device can be immediately managed as it will conform to the standards.

The models and protocols in the SMI-S implementation are platform-independent, enabling application development for any platform, and enabling them to run on different platforms. The SNIA will also provide interoperability tests which will help vendors test their applications and devices if they conform to the standard.