Breaking News - Platforms:
DMTF Unveils Details Of Breakthrough Server Management Standards
The Distributed Management Task Force Inc announced details of its upcoming
Systems Management Architecture for Server Hardware (SMASH), including the
SMASH Command Line Protocol (CLP) specification, which enables simple and
intuitive management of heterogeneous servers in the data center independent
of machine state, operating system state, server system topology or access
method. SMASH specifics were presented in a session at the Intel Developers
Forum on Sept. 9, and a prototype of the SMASH CLP will be demonstrated in an
interactive exhibit at the Enterprise Management World conference, being held
Sept. 12-15 in Philadelphia.
The DMTF's SMASH is a suite of specifications that deliver architectural
semantics, industry standard protocols and profiles to unify the management of
the data center. The SMASH CLP provides a command line syntax that builds on
the DMTF's Common Information Model (CIM) Schema, leveraging the richness of
this information model so that systems offered by different vendors will be
represented in similar ways. The SMASH CLP enables local and remote management
of server hardware in both Out-of-Service and Out-of-Band management
environments. SMASH also includes the DMTF's new SMASH Managed Element
Addressing Specification, SMASH CLP-to-CIM Mapping Specification, SMASH CLP
Discovery Specification, SMASH Profiles, as well as a SMASH Architecture White
Paper.
"With important initiatives like grid and utility computing underway at many
end user organizations, server management continues to be central to
controlling costs in the data center -- it is the building block upon which
successful management is built," said Winston Bumpus, president of DMTF.
"Since the DMTF's Server Management Working Group (SMWG) was announced, the
group has attracted 194 members from 44 companies, showing the industry's
remarkable unity behind this effort to deliver vendor-independent, platform
neutral server management. This groundswell of support has resulted in an
expanded scope for the DMTF's server management standards, and the outcome is
SMASH -- a suite of specifications that will enable unprecedented simplicity
for server management across diverse IT environments in the data center and
beyond. We invite the industry to attend Enterprise Management World next
week, and view the SMASH CLP prototype in a 'hands on' demonstration."
Industry Support for SMASH
"As a founding member and co-chair of the DMTF SMWG, HP strongly supports the
emerging SMASH CLP standard and believes it will significantly reduce data
center management complexity," said James Mouton, vice president of platforms
for HP Industry Standard Servers. "HP plans to broadly implement the SMASH CLP
standard for HP ProLiant and Integrity servers, and combined with HP Systems
Insight Manager and HP OpenView, customers will be able to better manage their
data centers."
"SMASH from the DMTF is a potent example of listening to Enterprise IT needs
and delivering cross platform solutions based on the standards that address
these needs," said Bill Sayles, general manager of Manageability Architecture
Product Division at Intel. "Intel has worked actively with the industry to
develop standards such as IPMI, PXE, EFI and the work we are doing with the
SMWG continues those leadership efforts. Intel continues its successful
commitment to deliver leading-edge management solutions to meet critical
Enterprise IT needs."
"The DMTF's SMASH is critical to providing our customers with the benefits of
dynamic provisioning, server virtualization, and aggregated management without
fear of vendor lock-in," said Mike Schroepfer, N1 Grid Systems CTO at Sun
Microsystems. "The N1 Grid System product suite allows our customers to tame
the complexity of the data center and manage thousands of systems as easily as
a single system. Sun is committed to using SMASH to provide the benefits of N1
Grid System to the widest array of hardware environments possible."
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