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SNIA ANNOUNCES SMI Lab5

Building on the success of the Storage Management Initiative (SMI) Lab4 and wide industry support for the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S), the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is launching the SMI Lab5 at the SNIA Technology Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. With record participation, the SMI Lab5 is aimed at solidifying storage management software support within the SMI-S, as well as adding new management profiles for storage hardware components.

The SMI Lab5 works toward three technical breakthroughs:

• Become the proving ground for the upcoming SMI-S version 1.1 release. The SMI-S v1.1 is expected to include profiles for health and fault management, performance monitoring, security and volume management, and the inclusion of additional NAS management profiles.
• Add SCSI testing capabilities by refining the fundamental infrastructure and expanding the protocols used to implement the SMI-S. This will provide key management infrastructure for the extension of the specification to manage emerging iSCSI-based storage networks.
• Demonstrate how the SMI-S can be used to manage global data centers. Built upon IP technology, the SMI-S lends itself to long-distance storage administration and management. The SMI Lab5 will demonstrate how management clients built on the SMI-S can manage both local and remote storage resources.

"Momentum behind the SMI-S and the SMI Labs continues to build," stated Jerry Duggan, SMI Lab program manager of SNIA. "The SMI Labs play a critical role in the development and refinement of the SMI-S, and serve as a key proving ground in preparation for products to pass the SNIA Conformance Testing Program (SNIA-CTP). Participating companies accelerate their SMI-S hardware and software development through a collaborative process that lowers overall spending on product development, while increasing customer value."

SMI Lab4 Dramatically Extended the Reach of SMI-S

The SMI Lab5 follows the successful completion of the SMI Lab4, which for the first time included profiles for HBA, tape libraries and NAS -- illustrating the growing breadth of the SMI-S.

Three goals were achieved by the SMI Lab4:

• Ensured that the SMI-S v1.0.2 were consistently implemented and interpreted across all participating vendor storage devices.
• Demonstrated scalability features of the SMI-S which enable storage software to manage very large-scale Storage Area Networks (SANs). The SMI Lab4, broke new ground in the industry by accomplished this through functioning indications, which allow storage devices to asynchronously inform management clients that relevant changes to the IT environment have occurred.
• Demonstrated how Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encrypted network protocol managing the communications between server and storage devices. The validation of SSL's performance within SMI-S environments allows users to benefit from this security technology, common in many IT architectures.

Dennis Martin, Senior Analyst at the Evaluator Group said, "The SNIA and participating companies are making great progress with the SMI-S through the SMI Lab events. After seeing the SMI Lab 4 activity first-hand, I can attest that the level of cooperation between participants and focus on the customer is genuine. It is good to see that many common storage management functions can be performed the same way for most storage hardware products. I encourage all end users to seriously consider SMI-S as a requirement in current and future requests for proposals."

Following an unprecedented multi-vendor industry announcement of product conformance to the SMI-S at the Spring 2004 Storage Networking World, the news illustrates that the SNIA is showing continued momentum with SMI, both in the reach of the specification, as well as in industry support. Since the spring announcement, the SNIA has seen renewed energy surrounding the SMI from existing large industry leading vendors, as well as small emerging technology companies.