Overview
ISO/IEC 24775-6:2014 - Information technology - Storage management - Part 6: Fabric defines management profiles for storage‑networking fabrics and related autonomous devices. It is one of eight parts in the ISO/IEC 24775 series and reorganizes earlier work into discrete profiles (Fabric, Switch, Extender, and iSCSI-to-FC Gateway). The document targets consistent management models for SAN fabrics, describing Common Information Model (CIM) classes, methods, indications and a maturity model for profile stabilization.
Key topics and technical requirements
- Fabric Profile: descriptive model for SANs and fabrics as AdminDomains, including topology, Systems and NetworkPorts, and N Port Virtualization (NPIV).
- Zoning and Zone Control: definitions and operational methods for zones and zone sets; methods such as CreateZone, AddZone, ActivateZoneSet and related job/session control operations.
- Enhanced Zoning / Zone Control Subprofiles: extended capabilities for zone aliases, named address collections and zone membership setting data; methods like CreateZoneAlias and AddZoneAlias.
- Health and Fault Management: requirements for monitoring fabric and device health, and for representing operational status in management interfaces.
- CIM Elements and Indications: a comprehensive mapping to CIM classes used for management (examples include CIM_AdminDomain, CIM_FCPort, CIM_Zone, CIM_ZoneSet, CIM_ProtocolEndpoint, CIM_ComputerSystem) and a set of indication filters for events (FCPort creation/deletion/status, Fabric merge/segmentation, Zone DB changes, etc.).
- Maturity Model: classification of material into stages (Experimental, Implemented, Stable, Finalized, Deprecated) to guide adoption and interoperability.
Practical applications
- Standardizes management interfaces for SAN fabrics to enable interoperable storage management tools and automation.
- Enables storage management software vendors to implement consistent CIM‑based models for inventory, topology discovery and zoning control.
- Helps SAN administrators and systems integrators automate zoning changes, monitor FCPort status, and manage fabric health across multi‑vendor environments.
- Supports device vendors (switches, extenders, gateways) in exposing management capabilities that align with industry practice.
Who should use this standard
- SAN and storage architects
- Storage management and observability tool developers
- Switch, gateway and storage array vendors
- Systems integrators and enterprise operations teams managing Fibre Channel fabrics
Related standards
- ISO/IEC 24775 series (Parts 1–8) - the overall Storage Management architecture and other profiles
- Replaces ISO/IEC 24775 (2nd edition, 2011) as a technical revision with reorganization into parts and profile maturity identification
Keywords: ISO/IEC 24775-6:2014, storage management, fabric, SAN, zoning, CIM, NPIV, Fibre Channel, zone control, storage automation.
