Overview
ISO/IEC 24775-3:2021 - "Information technology - Storage management - Part 3: Common profiles" defines the common profiles used by the SMI‑S (Storage Management Initiative Specification) model for storage management. Prepared by SNIA and adopted through ISO/IEC JTC 1, this part groups transport‑specific port profiles (e.g., iSCSI, FC, FCoE, SAS) and other cross‑cutting profiles that are reused by the other parts of the ISO/IEC 24775 series. The document provides background, profile definitions, and maturity guidance to promote interoperable multi‑vendor SANs and storage management implementations.
Key topics and technical requirements
- Profile definitions and scope
- Common port profiles are organized as transport‑specific variations of a common model; additional common profiles follow the port profiles.
- Profiles define the required CIM classes, properties, methods and relationships used by management servers and agents.
- CIM and SMI‑S foundation
- The standard is based on DMTF CIM schema Version 2.51 and maps SNIA classes to DMTF CIM classes where applicable.
- Changes include updating referenced schema, class specializations, and removal/deprecation of obsolete profiles.
- Profile lifecycle and maturity
- Three maturity levels are used: Experimental, Implemented, and Finalized. Each level indicates expected implementation experience and stability.
- Clear versioning rules (version, release, update) define backward compatibility expectations between revisions.
- Interoperability and specialization
- Profiles may specialize or refer to other profiles (e.g., Generic Initiator/Target Ports), enabling modular, interoperable management models across vendors.
- The specification documents promoted, deprecated, removed or revised profiles (examples: iSCSI, FC, FCoE, SAS, Server, Power Supply, Storage Enclosure).
- Governance and change control
- SNIA‑managed specification process with constraints on permissible changes among major/minor/update releases to preserve compatibility.
Practical applications - who uses this standard
- Storage array and SAN vendors implementing SMI‑S providers and management agents.
- Management software and orchestration platforms that rely on CIM/SMI‑S to discover, monitor, provision and control storage resources.
- System integrators and IT architects designing interoperable multi‑vendor SANs.
- Test labs and QA teams validating interoperability, conformance and backward compatibility of storage management implementations.
- Cloud and service providers managing heterogeneous storage infrastructures.
Related standards
- ISO/IEC 24775 series (Storage management) - other parts define specific profiles and bindings.
- DMTF CIM schema (referenced version 2.51) and related DMTF profiles (e.g., Indications Profile DSP1054 v1.2.2 mentioned in the document).
- SNIA SMI‑S technical specification (source material used for Part 3).
Keywords: ISO/IEC 24775-3:2021, storage management, SMI‑S, common profiles, SAN interoperability, CIM schema 2.51, SNIA, iSCSI, Fibre Channel, FCoE, SAS.