The release of Purity 4.6 introduced support for the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S). The SMI-S specification was created by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) to provide a unified interface for multiple storage vendors within a network. With the introduction of SMI-S support, FlashArray administrators can manage the array from an SMI-S client over HTTPS. A great example of an SMI-S client is Windows Server which introduced the Windows Storage Based Management feature starting with Windows Server 2012.
Functionality provided by the Everpure SMI-S provider includes the following profiles:
- Block Services Package -- Models existing storage capacity, the assignment of capacity to storage pools, and the allocation of capacity to be used by external devices or applications.
- Copy Services -- Provides a way to manage local mirrors, local snapshots and clones.
- Disk Drive Lite Subprofile -- Models disk drive devices.
- FC Target Ports -- Models the Fibre Channel specific aspects of a target storage system. Specializes the Generic Target Ports Profile.
- Location Subprofile -- Models location information.
- Masking and Mapping Subprofile -- Provides a way to manage which logical units (LUNs) are visible (exposed) to specific initiators through specific target ports.
- Multiple Computer System Subprofile -- Models multiple systems that cooperate to present a “virtual” computer system with additional capabilities or redundancy.
- Physical Package -- Models information about a storage system’s physical package and optionally about internal sub-packages.
- Software Subprofile -- Models software or firmware installed on a computer system.
- iSCSI Initiator Profile -- Models a network interface that acts as a client to an iSCSI target device.
- Indications Profile -- Provides support for event notifications. This can be a component profile of any other profile, and is a specialization of the DMTF Indications profile that adds SNIA elements and constraints.
Read the SMI-S Provider Guide for further details.