SMI-S: The Storage Management Initiative Specification

The Storage Management Initiative-Specification (SMI-S) is a standard that has been developed by the SNIA Storage Management Initiative (SMI), its “Member Companies,” and the SNIA’s Technical Working Groups in association with additional standards and technical bodies who are strategically aligned with the SNIA. The specification was designed with the purpose of standardizing and streamlining storage management functions and features into a common set of tools that address the day-to-day tasks of the IT environment.

The SMI-S effort began in 1997 as an idea built on the Distributed Management Task Force’s (DMTF) Common Information Model (CIM); it further incorporated the work and technology of many industry experts and companies. The spec was adopted formally by the SNIA, becoming "SMI-S" in 2002, and has grown considerably since that time. It has been implemented in over 500 products. SMI is currently developing an online vendor showcaseof these products.

SMI-S is now in development on v1.4. and is currently starting specification work on v1.5.  It has incorporated the work of over 50 companies and hundreds of engineers and v1.0 was designated as a standard by ISO/IEC in January 2007. The specification process starts with the TWGs and is reviewed by no less then 20 individuals who work through several different revisions before it is voted on for adoption by the participants of the TWG, TSG, and Technical Council. After it is adopted, it moves to the development phase through the SMI Lab program and then goes to the SMI-S Conformance Testing Program (SMI-S CTP) beginning with the Provider tests and followed by client testing approximately 6 months later. Not all SMI-S participants go through the SMI-S CTP. CTP ensures that certain baseline requirements are adhered to and conform to the specification. 

Storage Management Features and Functionality