Regret that after a long time I am again writing. Got busy with other stuffs.
Now the definition of SMI-S. A bookish definition would be:
SMI-S (Storage Management Initiative Specification) is a standard developed by the Storage Network Industry Association (SNIA) that is intended to facilitate the management of storage devices from multiple vendors in storage area networks (SANs). The specification was formerly called Bluefin. SMI-S was designed according to an initiative called Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM).
Now, as I think about SMI-S : it is a set of rules, which we call standard, using which one can represent any physical device and its functionality related to storage.
Say, you have a series of hard disks. Using SMI-S you can define and describe the functionalities of these disks individually or as a whole unit using different specifications from SMI-S.
SMI-S attempts to define a set of whats one should use to fully describe a device, how to do so is left on the individual developer.
SMI-S is mainly made up of different profiles. A profile basically provides a specific view of a full storage system.
Each profile uses a set of class definitions, each class defines a particular device, for that particular view, using a set of pre defined properties.
This appoach helps to define devices manufactured by any vendor through some common terms and properties.
Next blog, I will try to explain one such profile to give the idea, exactly what a profile can represent.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Monday, September 7, 2009
Types of Storage Configurations
A Storage configuration can be set up using a number of host systems, disk drives, controller cards etc. There are 3 broad divisions of how all these components are arranged/connected to form a whole system.
Instead of defining these, I would rather give an example of each kind of configuration. This is the way I distinguish different storage systems.
1. DAS or Direct attached storage.
The simplest example would be the hard drive attached to your personal computer. The hard drive is directly connected to your mother board through some kind of cable. Normal PCs have SATA disks so the connecting cables are basically SATA cables. You can get an info of what SATA is on the net, or wait till I put in another blog.
2. NAS or Network Attached Storage.
An example would be the web servers you use everyday for your office e-mail. Some LAN connection connects you to the web server and your e-mails etc gets stored in that web server. This is one of the most popular form of storage configurations in use.
2. SAN or Storage Area Network
SAN is a separate network setup to serve only storage devices and servers.
SANs are primarily used in large scale, high performance enterprise storage operations. For example, the way a music portal can maintain all its web contents in its servers. SAN are not only a configuration but an entire business solution in itself.
In following blogs we will see a more detailed view of each type of these configurations with a picture aided view of their architecture.
Instead of defining these, I would rather give an example of each kind of configuration. This is the way I distinguish different storage systems.
1. DAS or Direct attached storage.
The simplest example would be the hard drive attached to your personal computer. The hard drive is directly connected to your mother board through some kind of cable. Normal PCs have SATA disks so the connecting cables are basically SATA cables. You can get an info of what SATA is on the net, or wait till I put in another blog.
2. NAS or Network Attached Storage.
An example would be the web servers you use everyday for your office e-mail. Some LAN connection connects you to the web server and your e-mails etc gets stored in that web server. This is one of the most popular form of storage configurations in use.
2. SAN or Storage Area Network
SAN is a separate network setup to serve only storage devices and servers.
SANs are primarily used in large scale, high performance enterprise storage operations. For example, the way a music portal can maintain all its web contents in its servers. SAN are not only a configuration but an entire business solution in itself.
In following blogs we will see a more detailed view of each type of these configurations with a picture aided view of their architecture.
Monday, August 24, 2009
1st Blog
I will not start writing a full lecture note on this 1st blog. I can let you all know what you can find in this blog.
I currently work for developing storage management applications. A year back I never thought of storage to be a very interesting thing. All I cared about is my laptop has 120 GB of space and that is a lot to store all my e-books and music.
Then I started with this work and came into the world of storage. None of us ever think about how much space we daily use, let us say, just for our mail accounts, every mail we receive now-a-days have some attachment or the other. All these pictures, pdfs get stored in our mailboxes.
Each of us have at least one mail account and if we think about just all our friends with gmail accounts, just imagine how much space our mailboxes occupy at Google's mail server.
Storage management is all about managing such vast amount of storage so that we never feel shortage of storage and never lose any data!!!
In the last one year I have slowly learnt a lot about this management, and I will share with all of you this vast knowledge as far as I can. So keep looking.
I currently work for developing storage management applications. A year back I never thought of storage to be a very interesting thing. All I cared about is my laptop has 120 GB of space and that is a lot to store all my e-books and music.
Then I started with this work and came into the world of storage. None of us ever think about how much space we daily use, let us say, just for our mail accounts, every mail we receive now-a-days have some attachment or the other. All these pictures, pdfs get stored in our mailboxes.
Each of us have at least one mail account and if we think about just all our friends with gmail accounts, just imagine how much space our mailboxes occupy at Google's mail server.
Storage management is all about managing such vast amount of storage so that we never feel shortage of storage and never lose any data!!!
In the last one year I have slowly learnt a lot about this management, and I will share with all of you this vast knowledge as far as I can. So keep looking.
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