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SNIA Swordfish Specification

Standards-based RESTful API is extension to DMTF Redfish API spec.

The Storage Networking Industry Association‘s (SNIA) Storage Management Initiative (SMI) announced the completion of version 1.0 of the Swordfish storage management specification.

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This specification extends the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) Redfish application programming interface (API) to handle the management of storage equipment and storage services found in modern data centres.

By extending the DMTF Redfish API protocol and schema, the Swordfish specification helps to provide a unified approach for the management of storage and servers in hyperscale and cloud infrastructure environments, making it easier for IT administrators to integrate scalable solutions into their data centres. The same  RESTful interface is used, along with JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and Open Data Protocol (OData), to manage storage equipment and storage services in addition to servers.

SNIA Swordfish is designed to integrate with the technologies used in cloud data centre environments and can be used to accomplish a broad range of storage management tasks from the simple to the advanced,” said Don Deel, chair, SMI, SNIA. “SNIA Swordfish is easier to understand and implement than legacy standards, which will accelerate its adoption and use by storage equipment vendors and management application vendors.

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Swordfish has been designed around management use cases that focus on what IT administrators need to do with storage equipment and storage services in a data centre. As a result, the API provides functionality that simplifies the way storage can be allocated, monitored, and managed. For example, the API is able to associate different classes of service with storage systems having different levels of performance in a data centre. Once this has been done, an IT administrator can allocate storage to servers or VMs by specifying the storage class of service needed, without worrying about many of the details associated with finding or configuring a particular storage system with the desired performance characteristics. The API defined by the specification also supports having value-add, vendor-specific functionality alongside standardised functionality, to accommodate future storage-related capabilities.

Defined by the SNIA Scalable Storage Management Technical Work Group, the Swordfish specification is the result of an industry collaboration involving the leading companies in the storage industry.

Jeffrey Snover, technical fellow, Microsoft Corp., commented: “Microsoft is an active participant in the SNIA Technical Work Group developing SNIA Swordfish to make sure the most important scenarios for this specification will work well with our products. Because SNIA Swordfish is an extension of Redfish that will be widely adopted in virtualised environments, vendors will no longer need to produce versions for any one particular OS.

Jeff Hilland, president, DMTF, Inc. (Distributed Management Task Force), added: “By extending DMTF’s groundbreaking Redfish standard, SNIA Swordfish brings the ability to manage storage and storage services in a way that is consistent with how servers and fabrics are managed. This is the type of approach needed for the management of today’s hyperscale and cloud infrastructures.

Storage management industry experts presented information on Swordfish at Storage Developer Conference in Santa Clara, CA, including:

  • Introduction and overview of Redfish

  • Overview of Swordfish: Scalable storage management

  • Swordfish deep-dive: Scalable storage management


Richelle Ahlvers, architect, principal storage management, Broadcom Ltd., said: “SNIA Swordfish defines a RESTful API which provides an extremely scalable storage management platform for file and block storage provisioning, volume mapping and masking, replication, and capacity and health reporting tools. Swordfish simplifies storage management and allows OEMs to easily differentiate their products.

Jon Hass, engineer, Dell, Inc., said: “Dell is fully committed to Redfish, and we have enabled our PowerEdge servers and other product lines with embedded Redfish Services. SNIA Swordfish expands Redfish even further by abstracting the intricacies of storage infrastructure and will enable customers to more readily handle their day-to-day storage needs.

George Ericson, engineer, EMC core technologies, said: “EMC is committed to implementing standard interfaces to help customers reduce their TCO. EMC is actively participating in the development of SNIA Swordfish, which provides simple, scalable, service oriented storage management.”

Doug Voigt, technologist, storage, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP, said: Redfish is a very important standard for managing systems in a modern, uniform way. SNIA’s SSM Technical Working Group has been very progressive in recasting storage management into the Redfish paradigm with SNIA Swordfish. This will be a giant step towards the kind of application centric virtual system creation capability needed for nimble datacentre management.

Jim Pappas, director, marketing, Intel Corporation, and vice chairman, board of directors, SNIA, said: “Open standards developed by and for multiple vendors and the open-source community are critical for fostering innovation and supporting broad adoption of new technologies, which is why Intel plays an active role in the development of SNIA Swordfish. As an extension to DMTF’s Redfish, SNIA Swordfish will enable interoperable management of heterogeneous storage vendor systems, helping to further the ease of deployment and use of Intel Architecture-based storage solutions.”

Jeffrey Snover, technical fellow, Microsoft Corp., said: “As part of our commitment to datacentre standards based management, Microsoft is working with DMTF and SNIA and its member companies on developing the Redfish and SNIA Swordfish specifications. These emerging specifications will provide IT administrators a unified approach for managing servers, network switches, fabrics and storage.”

David Dale, director, industry standards, NetApp, Inc., said: “SNIA Swordfish is an important next-generation storage management standard aimed at meeting the requirements of emerging Third platform data centre environments, where scalability, ease-of-management, ,lity, and compatibility with DevOps tools are essential. NetApp is actively involved in the development of SNIA Swordfish, as it is clearly in the interests of our customers who look to us to enable their use of cloud services while retaining control over their data assets.

Murali Rajagopal, senior product strategist, Vmware, Inc., said: “As data centre managers have realised the strong benefits that virtualisation brings to the data centre, they will also see the upside SNIA Swordfish offers through the development of mor efficient storage management implemenations in scale-out environments.

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