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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / AUGUST 18, 2003; VOL. 2 NO. 33
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Breaking News -
Storage:
SNIA Launches SMI-Lab3 For Storage
Management
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced
ground-breaking
progress in the advancement toward achieving interoperable storage management
with the introduction of the SMI-Lab3 Developers Demonstration Program.
Established by the SNIA Storage Management Forum (SMF), the SMI-Lab3 will be
showcased at the Fall Storage Networking World (SNW) 2003 in October and will
publicly feature the success and progress to date with the Storage Management
Initiative (SMI). The SMI-Lab, a reference implementation of network storage
and management products, uses SMI-S as the interface to simplify the
complexity of managing storage. Formerly labeled CIM-SAN, the SMI-Lab3 (the
third iteration of this demonstration) began accepting storage vendor
participants on July 1, 2003, and will operate through December 31, 2003, at
the SNIA Technology Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.
"As a vendor-collaborative organization, the SNIA works in conjunction with
its members to make storage networking technologies understandable, simpler to
implement, easier to manage, and recognized as valued assets to the business
process," said Mark Carlson, chair of the SNIA SMI Technical Steering Group.
"This evolution of the SMI-Lab program will result in the timely delivery of
reliable and unparalleled storage management solutions to the customer."
The lab is an extension of the highly successful CIM-SAN-2 demonstration
conducted during the first half of 2003 where 20 participating companies
integrated 35 products creating 160 points of interoperability. With emphasis
on expanding the breadth of SMI-S, significant testing and monitoring has
evolved the CIM-SAN program into the newly unveiled SMI-Lab3.
The SMI-Lab3 includes the application of the newly announced SNIA
Interoperability Conformance Testing Program (ICTP), a foundation for
validating rigid compliance to the SMI-S v1.0 interface. The testing process
will be used to measure vendor product compliance, as well as to test the
consistency and maturity of the evolving specification development
process.
The SNIA Technology Center will host the SMI-Lab3 program as a permanent
and
open multi-vendor testing base in order to accelerate storage management
standards development. The Technology Center's sophisticated environment gives
participating companies the ability to examine and enhance the mutual
offerings for customers prior to the public demonstration at SNW later this
year. The first SMI-Lab3 plugfest will be held the week of August 18, and the
second during the week of September 22.
The SMI-Lab3 reaches beyond the Fibre Channel SAN technology and expands
the
storage network protocol set to include NAS and storage over IP. The lab also
serves as a platform for the development implementations of SMI-S v1.1
containing:
- Health and diagnostics
- Additional security
- Performance monitoring
- Policy management
"The SNIA's SMI represents more than just an initiative for storage
management; it is going to revolutionize the industry across the board," said
Jerry Duggan, SNIA SMI-Lab program manager. "SMI-Lab3 brings the SNIA even
closer to its goal that all new storage networking products will utilize the
SMI-S standard in their management."
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