The Storage Management Initiative Specification, commonly called SMI-S, is a computer data storage management standard developed and maintained by the Storage Networking Industry Association. It has also been ratified as an ISO standard. SMI-S is based upon the Common Information Model and the Web-Based Enterprise Management standards defined by the Distributed Management Task Force, which define management functionality via HTTP. The most recent approved version of SMI-S is available on the SNIA website. The main objective of SMI-S is to enable broad interoperable management of heterogeneous storage vendor systems. The current version is SMI-S 1.8.0 Rev 4. Over 1,350 storage products are certified as conformant to SMI-S.
Basic concepts
SMI-S defines CIM management profiles for storage systems. The entire SMI Specification is categorized in profiles and subprofiles. A profile describes the behavioral aspects of an autonomous, self-contained management domain. SMI-S includes profiles for Arrays, Switches, Storage Virtualizers, Volume Management and several other management domains. In DMTF parlance, an SMI-S provider is an implementation for a specific profile or set of profiles. A subprofile describes a part of a management domain, and can be a common part in more than one profile. 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 communications link to providers.
Servers are the devices under management. Servers can be disk arrays, virtualization engines, host bus adapters, switches, tape drives, etc.
SMI-S timeline
2000 – Collection of computer storage industry leaders led by Roger Reich begins building an interoperable management backbone for storage and storage networks in a small consortia called the Partner Development Process.
2002 – Bluefin donated by the consortia to the Storage NetworkingIndustry Association and later renamed to Storage Management Initiative – Specification or SMI-S. SMI-S 1.0 publicly announced by the SNIA.
2006 – SMI-S 1.0.3 accepted as an ISO standard. SMI-S 1.1.0 published as a SNIA Technical Position. Working Drafts developed for SMI-S 1.2.0.
2007 – SMI-S 1.2.0 published as a SNIA Technical Position. Working Drafts developed for SMI-S 1.3.0 and SMI-S 1.4.0.
2008 – SMI-S 1.1.1 published as an ANSI standard and submitted to ISO for consideration as an ISO standard. SMI-S 1.3.0 published as a SNIA Technical Position.
2009 – SMI-S 1.4.0 published as a SNIA Technical Position. Working Drafts developed for SMI-S 1.5.0.
2010 – SMI-S 1.5.0 published as a SNIA Technical Position. Working Drafts developed for SMI-S 1.6.0.
2011 – SMI-S 1.1.1 published as an ISO standard, ISO/IEC 24775:2011. SMI-S 1.3.0 published as an ANSI standard: INCITS 388-2011. Development continues on SMI-S 1.6.0 and 1.6.1 in SNIA Technical Work Groups. Discussions are being conducted re a possible SMI-S V2.0.
2012 – published as a SNIA Technical Position. Five interoperability plugfests held.
2013 – Working Drafts developed for SMI-S 1.6.1. Five interoperability plugfests held, include one international plugfest.
2014 – Eight books that comprise SMI-S 1.5.0 published as an ISO standard: Information technology -- Storage management. SNIA SMI-S 1.6.1 Rev 5 published as a SNIA Technical Position. Working Drafts developed for SMI-S 1.7.0 Rev 1. Six interoperability plugfests held, including two international plugfests.
2015 – Working Drafts developed for SMI-S 1.7.0. Six interoperability plugfests held, including one in China.
2016 – SMI-S 1.7.0 Rev 5 is published as a SNIA Technical Position. Multiple interoperability plugfests held.
2018 – SMI-S 1.8.0 Rev 3 is published as a SNIA Technical Position. Multiple interoperability plugfests held.
2019 – SMI-S 1.8.0 Rev 4 is published as a SNIA Technical Position. Multiple interoperability plugfests held.
- An open source library written in Python. It provides storage management software developers and system administrators with an easy-to-use method of accessing Common Information Model objects and operations in Web-Based Enterprise Management servers, such as those found in SMI-S and other CIM-based environments.
- A repository of pywbem projects on GitHub.
- An overview of pywbem projects, community issues and feature requests.
SMI-S monitor client for SMI-enabled Arrays, Switches, HBAs and Storage Libraries.
