Managers Development Conference

December 5 - 8, 2005
Santa Clara Marriott, Santa Clara, California


Track - Storage Management

SMI-S Overview
Mark Carlson, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

SMI-S has received widespread adoption now among vendors of storage networks and storage devices. The next areas to address with a common, interoperable management interface are those of Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) and Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). This talk focuses on the areas within a model for lifecycle entities that can be addressed by SMI-S and what this will mean in an IT environment. The resulting reduction in cost and complexity of managing data and information should parallel that seen in the storage space. In addition, the talk will show how business needs can be met by automating the maintenance of service levels through policy-based management.

Understanding the basics of SMI and the Fibre Channel
John Crandall, Brocade

This presentation is a jump start for anyone new to SMI and wants to develop a provider for a fibre channel fabric and switch that conforms to the SNIA SMI Specification. The presentation takes you from the beginning by opening the SNIA SMI Specification, identifying which parts of the SNIA specification apply, to writing the requirements document, to considerations when designing and writing your provider.

From SMI Specification to SMI-S client code
Steve Hand, Symantec Software

This talk walks the audience through the process of matches functionality to be implemented, to what SMI-S provides for functionality, and to coding a client. The client code is prepared in advanced and reviewed with the audience. The audience will gain knowledge on using SMI-S and coding clients.

Understanding SMI & NAS
Alan Yoder, Network Appliance

This talk will present the current state of the art with respect to NAS management via SMI-S. Profiles required to model a self-contained NAS server, as well as a NAS gateway, will be discussed.  Work currently scoped for SMI-S 1.2--and likely implications---will also be presented.

Managing iSCSI with SMI
Scott Baker, iStor Networks

This session will provide an overview of how iSCSI is managed in SMI 1.1. Attendees will be introduced to supported management capabilities, both active and passive, the iSCSI CIM model itself, and the specification subprofiles, both Initiator and Target related. A working knowledge of the iSCSI object model is assumed.

The SMI-S Array profile and how to implement it efficiently
Steve Peters, Hewlett Packard

This presentation will cover the Array profile as defined in the latest SNIA SMI-S standard ( V1.1.0 ). The focus will be on efficient implementations of both the provider and client. The presentation will point out areas of the profile that have been changed to allow more efficient implementations and other areas that are known trouble spots.

Security Profiles
George Ericson, EMC

This talk describes the proposed DMTF profiles for Authentication and Role Based Authorization. The Authentication Profile specifies the capability to manage 1st and 3rd party authentication. 1st party authentication includes accounts and groups of accounts on the managed system. 3rd party authentication includes the client utilization aspects only. The Role Base Authorization Profile specifies the capability to manage role based authorization. The profile includes the ability to model 1st and 3rd party authorization. 3rd party authorization is modeled from the perspective of the managed, client system.The information in these profiles is intended to be sufficient for a provider or consumer of this data to unambiguously identify the classes, properties, methods, and values that are used to represent and manage roles, privileges, users and groups.

SMI CTP Explained
James Rigger, SNIA

This topic is focused on conveying the methodologies of designing testing for conformance to the SMI-S. The understanding of the methodologies will assist the developers of SMI-S compatable products with their efforts to design their own products so that they may conform to the specification. Emphasis will be placed on the top 15 to 20 common mistakes which prevent products from passing the SMI testing process.

Custom Vendor Profiles based on SMI-S
Mark Vetter, Sun Microsystems, Inc.


Device vendors offering SMI-S interfaces for their products can use a number of strategies to accomplish this.  One technique is to implement SMI-S as a grafted interface, layered over existing proprietary interfaces.  Another is to place the SMI-S interface directly inline as an embedded layer within the management stack.  This talk examines these two approaches and compares the merits of each.