SMI-S Slogs Along

Much has been made of the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) -- at least, by vendors with SNIA-certified implementations (see Playing Nice, the Standards Way). But these same vendors are taking varying amounts of time -- some, it appears, quite a lot of time -- getting products to market.

As the industry-approved management protocol for multivendor storage networks, SMI-S could theoretically make life easier for nearly anyone with a SAN. The specs let management programs interact with SAN devices from any vendor, as long as gear is equipped with an SMI-S agent.

At least that's the plan. To take advantage of SMI-S calls for software hooks to be created for specific devices that provide a view into their inner workings, opening them up for monitoring, configuring, and other supervisory functions. Together, these hooks comprise SMI-S agents, or clients. APIs (application programming interfaces) also are required to make these agents available to management applications. The apps in turn need APIs to get their virtual hands on the devices and make the whole process work.

From the device standpoint, 13 vendors have created SNIA-approved agents to make their wares manageable:

In addition, a couple of non-certified vendors are getting involved. Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) has outfitted its MDS 9000 switches with an integral SMI-S client that developers can write to. Even though Cisco didn't participate in the last SNIA conformance test fest in April, the company plans to do so when the test is repeated this fall.A handful of suppliers have tackled the writing of management applications, most notably AppIQ Inc., which has added SMI-S to its SAN management suite and licenses both agent and management app APIs to a range of partners. EMC also plans to offer its own SMI-S management system "soon"; and McData plans an SMI-S software development kit for management apps in the second half of this year.

But all this activity isn't making SMI-S the universal standard that's desperately needed in the storage world. Despite the progress, vendors are at different stages of providing developers with the necessary help, including APIs, that will allow them to write applications. And without this help, the vision of multivendor SAN management remains just a vision.

At least one SMI-S seeker found this out the hard way. Charles Morrall, a consultant who works with Benzler Data, a VAR in Gteborg, Sweden, was looking for tools to help write code for his clients' SANs. He got online and found ready development help from HP, Cisco, and EMC, but hit the wall with other vendors, particularly Brocade.

Morrall says Brocade required him first to join its regular developer program in order to get SMI-S assistance -- for a hefty fee. Subsequently, though, Morrall says Brocade came through with a free SMI-S developer program, but a representative told him a couple of weeks back -- weeks after his first inquiry -- that it will be yet another "few weeks" before Brocade processes its SMI-S applicants.

"I only want to create a few aliases, a new zone, and enable the new configuration," he asserts. "I can do it with three or four telnet commands, and by the look of things, that's probably what I'll end up doing to get any progress here."At press time, an inquiry to Brocade about the situation was still awaiting answer. But Morrall, who says he otherwise is happy with Brocade, wonders just how prepared some vendors are to embrace a standard that supports multivendor wares, and how ready they are to support it for all developers, not just the big names: "Isn't SMI-S an open standard that all vendors want to embrace and spread around?"

A brief survey of storage vendors shows there's solid interest in providing SMI-S help, but suppliers are in varying stages of offering formalized programs. Click on Table 1 below to see the status of SMI-S developer support from vendors that responded to our inquiries at press time.

Table 1: Selected SMI-S Developer Programs

In the past, attempts to create multivendor standards for managing non-SAN assets have often run into different snags, as vendors look to protect their own interests (see Management Musings). There were rumblings of similar conflicts when HP first unveiled its SMI-S developer program last year (see Will HP Help Standards Surge?). But analysts say vendors are serious about SMI-S.

"[Vendors] are supporting it whole heartedly," writes Marc Staimer, president of Dragon Slayer Consulting, in an email. "They were forced to have some interoperability in their proprietary APIs. SMI-S reduces their R&D significantly."AppIQ's CTO Ash Ashutosh says SMI-S progress is about what he expects. "It's happening faster than skeptics say it is," he asserts. He's found enterprise customer interest in the spec to be sizeable, and he says AppIQ is in the process of building an API kit for smaller companies.

— Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch