A group comprised of 10 storage industry companies will propose an open source project to the Eclipse Foundation. The Aperi community's proposed “Aperi framework” would be based initially on code contributions from Fujitsu, IBM, and McData, and would provide an open, standards-based way to integrate storage equipment and management tools from multiple vendors, the Aperi group suggests.

Additionally, Novell has joined Aperi, the organization reports. Previous members include Brocade Communication Systems, Cisco Systems, CA, Emulex, LSI Logic, Fujitsu Limited, IBM, McDATA, and Network Appliance. Aperi was formed in October of 2005.

The Aperi group says that by developing a storage management platform as an open source-based framework, its project would increase collaboration and innovation across the storage industry, enabling technology vendors to “base their offerings on the common Aperi framework, contribute code to the open source project, or both.” The project will be seeded initially by a million-line plus IBM source code contribution derived from its TotalStorage Productivity Center product, the group says.

The Aperi group says that in developing its framework, its constituents will work closely with the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) to ensure compliance with the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S).

Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, stated, “The Aperi framework can thrive in a vibrant open source community and help expand the greater Eclipse ecosystem.”

Wayne M. Adams, chairperson of the SNIA, stated, “The SNIA SMI-S industry standard enables IT end users to establish an interoperable, storage management environment that simplifies manageability and improves investment protection when adding, changing, upgrading, and retiring storage components. SNIA's planned relationship with Aperi will include interoperability programs for SMI-S, the use of SNIA facilities for Aperi interoperability programs, and advancing current and new storage standards. The IT industry will benefit from Aperi helping to drive SMI-S implementations, storage technologies and open standards.”

Additional perspective on the Aperi group's efforts to drive storage management standards can be be found in an eWEEK story, here.

 
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