SNIA Jump Starts the Conformance Testing of SMI-S v1.2 Products

Dublin, Dec 11, 2007 (M2 PRESSWIRE via COMTEX) -- IBM | charts | news | PowerRating -- The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced that five vendors are now shipping products that conform to the latest version of the SNIA's Conformance Testing Program (SNIA-CTP) for the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) Provider Test suite.

The program was developed to help ensure enterprise and storage management products deliver on the benefits of the fast-evolving SMI-S standard. In the history of the program, the SNIA-CTP has completed provider testing of more than 500 vendor hardware products from 27 companies. The new SMI-S Provider Test suite now adds the capability to test storage products for conformance to the SMI-S version 1.2. The first vendors to pass the SNIA-CTP SMI-S Provider Test suite for version 1.2 storage management include EMC Corp., Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM and NetApp.

"This is yet another confirmation of the steady progress made by the SMI-S program for end users and the greater storage industry," said Paul von Behren, Chair of the Storage Management Initiative. "IT professionals are always looking for greater flexibility in choosing the right solution as well as the ability to reduce the number of vendor-specific storage management tools required to manage today's heterogeneous data center. The SNIA-CTP encompasses both the management software and hardware infrastructure, bringing the industry closer to providing IT users with trusted storage management solutions that help ease their management complexity."

Today, the SNIA has expanded its testing of storage products that conform to the recently completed draft of SMI-S version 1.2 that includes functional enhancements to the array and storage virtualizer support. The SNIA will also roll out additional programs to add testing of additional storage products, such as Fabric and NAS, which conform to SMI-S version 1.2 to further its multi-vendor or heterogeneous storage management.

The SNIA also announced the availability of new SMI Install Portals for Providers to assist end users in deploying SMI-S products in their environments. Linked from the SNIA-CTP pages for conformant providers, these vendor sites provide useful information for installing and configuring SMI-S support for conformant products. These member company websites contain information designed to help end users more effectively deploy and manage native SMI-S enabled hardware and software. The SMI Install Portals for Providers pages can be reached from the SNIA-CTP pages for providers, which is located at http://www.snia.org/forums/smi/tech_programs/ctp/conformingproviders/.

The first vendors to provide their SMI Install Portals for Providers include Brocade, Cisco, EMC, HP, IBM and NetApp. "The SMI Install Portal for Providers is aimed at easing some of the pain customers have experienced in trying to deploy SMI-S supported products in their environments," said Mike Walker, Chair of the Storage Management Initiative Conformance Committee. "When customers install an SMI-S client in a multi-vendor SMI-S environment, they are faced with the challenge of installing a variety of providers at various levels. The SMI Install Portal for Providers will allow customers to readily find installation and configuration information for the providers they need in their environment."

SNIA: www.snia.org

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