SMI-S for the Storage Area Network (SAN) Management

The storage vendors have their own standards for the management of their storage resources but it creates interoperability issues on different storage products. With the recent advent of the new protocol named Storage Management Initiative-Specification (SMI-S), the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has taken a major step in order to make the storage management more effective and organized. SMI-S has replaced its predecessor Storage Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and it has been categorized as an ISO standard. The main objective of the SMI-S is to provide interoperability management of the heterogeneous storage vendor systems by unifying the Storage Area Network (SAN) management, hence making the dreams of the network managers come true. SMI-S is a guide to build systems using modules that ‘plug’ together. SMI-S compliant storage modules that use CIM ‘language’ and adhere to CIM schema interoperate in a system regardless of which vendor built them. SMI-S is object-oriented, any physical or abstract storage-related elements can be defined as a CIM object. SMI-S can unify the SAN management systems and it works well with the heterogeneous storage environment.