HBA Management
• Manageability challenges:
– 100’s or 1000’s of HBAs across the enterprise
–Diferent OSs
– Different driver versions
– Different firmware levels
– Different vendors
• Look for these manageability features:
– Firmware upgradeability
– Driver compatibility across models
– FDMI support (Fibre Channel only)
– HBA API compliance (Fibre Channel only)
– SMI-S compliance
Manageability features:
Use of upgradeable firmware to enable support for new services without
requiring new hardware or ASIC change
Drivers that support backwards compatibility and multiple HBA models to
simplify enterprise deployment and management models.
The Fabric Device Management Interface (FDMI) enables management
of devices such as HBAs through the fabric.
CIM/SMI-S compliance is another feature to look for.
CIM/SMI-S promises to enable simplified, centralized, cross-
vendor management of HBAs.