Such was the moist tone of a news conference-turned-backpat-fest for vendors bragging about making their products work together. And the room was full, with only a smattering of press at the session. Representatives from the following companies showed up to take bows:
After the announcement, the group posed for a photo to mark the day for posterity. (Unfortunately, we couldn't get a copy, but here's a reasonable facsimile.)
A few customers who sit on SNIAs board were on hand to lay out the goals of the spec group. Were shooting for the meat and potatoes of day-to-day activity, said Ray Dickensheets of Sprint Corp. (NYSE: FON). We want to be able to put an array on the network and have it automatically discovered. Dickensheets said other automated processes will include Fibre Channel LUN masking, LUN mapping, zoning, and zone management.
Sadly, autodiscovery and other tasks in multivendor storage networks are still protracted processes that include buying or writing proprietary software to get different vendors products to work together. Sometimes one vendor will have different management tools for its various products.
And it will take awhile for the SMI-S spec to make a difference. Asked if customers can junk their proprietary legacy management systems and interoperability matrices, Reich said, No, they cant. Vendors are in the process of shipping SMI-S interfaces. Our target is all storage shipping with SMI-S interface by the end of 2005. Other types of products such as HBAs and routers will be certified in the next stage.
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