Additional interfaces, web services and security protocols offers cost savings for IT Professionals managing server environments

PORTLAND, ORE. September 13, 2007 The Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTFÆ), the industry organization leading the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management initiatives and standards, today announced the public release of Version 2.0 of its Systems Management Architecture for Server Hardware (SMASH) Initiative.

Building on top of the existing SMASH 1.0 work that offered a consistent method to managing servers using a standardized command line (CLP), SMASH 2.0 adds support for programmatic interfaces, web services and security protocols. By using existing DMTF technologies such as Web Services for Management (WS-Management) and Common Information Model (CIM), IT professionals can lower costs by enabling consistent, intuitive and automated management of servers from multiple vendors. This management is independent of machine state, operating system state, system design or access method - increasing efficiencies and lowering operational costs while enhancing flexibility and scalability. SMASH encompasses virtual and redundant servers, blades and racks, as well as telecommunications and mission-critical high-end servers.

Simplifying Server Management for IT Professionals "SMASH 2.0 represents a significant milestone for the industry," said DMTF President Winston Bumpus. "The SMASH Initiative provides comprehensive server management that delivers renewed simplicity to this critical pain point in the data center. SMASH 2.0 enables administrators, software and hardware vendors to create and leverage vendor-independent, platform-neutral automated server management ultimately leading to reduced costs."

Speeding Time-to-Market for Vendors and Developers For management systems vendors, SMASH makes it easier to support multi-vendor servers by providing common profiles to support consistent management capabilities regardless of CPU architecture, chipset solutions, vendor or operating environments. This will facilitate integration of servers using these standards with automation software solutions, thereby eliminating the need to write vendor-specific code for each task. For server hardware developers, SMASH simplifies platform management and allows easier integration of third-party software to leverage the growing ecosystem of available tools and open standards. SMASH helps developers deliver long-term interoperability and vendor-neutral management capabilities while ensuring that their existing systems will be compatible with future offerings from across the industry.

More Information The DMTF's SMASH Implementation Requirements Specification, Version 2.0, is available for download here. For more information on the SMASH Initiative and server management, visit the DMTF Web site at http://www.dmtf.org/standards/mgmt/smash/. To participate in the DMTF's Systems Management Forum, which helps ensure that consumers of SMASH-based server management standards both end users and the ISV community receive interoperable management technology for multi-vendor server systems, visit http://www.dmtf.org/interoperability/smf/.

Industry Support for SMASH 2.0 "As an active contributor to the various standards defined in the DMTF, AMD regards the continued industry support for SMASH as gratifying," said Lars Ewe, director, Systems Manageability, AMD. "As systems management continues to be one of the main cost drivers for IT, AMD is working with our technology partners to enable standards-based platforms and solutions that simplify systems management and drive down TCO. Similar to the benefits enabled by the DASH standard for client management, SMASH 2.0 expands the scope of interoperable server management and will allow IT administrators to manage their heterogeneous datacenter environments with more flexibility and at lower costs."

"Dell is committed to simplifying data center management through standards and ease of integration. Standards-based hardware, like Dell's PowerEdge server line, and standards-based management tools based on the DMTF's SMASH 2.0 is a key part of Dell's Unified Manageability Architecture vision to Simplify IT," said Subo Guha, director, Dell enterprise software.

"HP believes that SMASH 2.0 presents an important next step in meeting customers' requirements for consistent, cross-vendor server management," said Greg Huff, Chief Technologist, HP Industry Standard Servers. "HP is committed to enabling standards-based management on ProLiant servers to help customers improve IT efficiency. HP anticipates continued growth in the value and adoption of SMASH as HP, our partners and the Systems Management Forum actively integrate SMASH-based functionality into their management product portfolios."

"Hitachi is very pleased that SMASH 2.0 has extended its capabilities with a Web services interface that makes it a much broader and more useful tool for server management tasks," said Masaya Watanabe, executive general manager, Enterprise Server Division, Hitachi, Ltd. "We plan to support SMASH in future product offerings of Hitachi's 'Harmonious Computing' service platform so that our customers can benefit from the unified, effective server management capabilities it provides. We also will continue to support SMASH cross-vendor interoperability through our participation in the DMTF System Management Forum."

"With the introduction of Web services based management for heterogeneous server platforms, SMASH represents a significant advancement in interoperable systems management. SMASH is a great complement to IBM Director and our suites of industry-leading systems management tools," said Dr. Tom Bradicich, IBM Fellow and vice president, Systems Technology, Blade, Rack and x86 Servers. "As a leading contributor to the development of SMASH, IBM continues to provide value to our customers through open, standards based solutions."

"The evolution of SMASH with an increased feature set and the inclusion of the WS-Management Web services standard for server hardware management is exciting to us," said Larry Orecklin, general manager of System Center marketing, Microsoft. "Microsoft has been helping to drive interoperability and industry standards, such as WS-Management, alongside with other industry leaders as part of our Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) and we are advancing the adoption of these technologies in Windows Vista and our System Center family of management solutions."

"This new version of SMASH is another important step toward accelerating platform-neutral data center management," said Eric Anderson, vice president of engineering at Novell. "Novell has long been a contributor and supporter of these standards initiatives and is committed to incorporating open standards in the Novell ZENworks Orchestrator and ZENworks Virtual Machine Management solutions. With open standards, like SMASH 2.0, Novell is delivering heterogeneous, cross-platform server management tools that help customers simplify management in their data center and control costs in their enterprises."

"SMASH 2.0 is an exciting new release from DMTF, bringing Web services to server management," said Gary Phillips, senior director of development for Symantec. "Symantec continues to be an enthusiastic supporter of, and contributor to, the DMTF and its standards in order to further reduce data center complexity for our customers."

"The SMASH 2.0 release is yet another milestone for helping lowering the cost and complexity of data center management," said Troy Biegger, VP Marketing and Sales, WBEM Solutions. "We are planning to add SMASH support this year to both our C WBEM Server and J WBEM Server products, providing our customers with a complete management solution."

"IT customers need a common way to manage server hardware from a variety of vendors. As a DMTF leadership member helping to define industry standards, Avocent is already implementing the SMASH 2.0 specification within our embedded firmware and appliance products," said Steve Rokov, Director of Marketing, Avocent Corp. "We believe our support of SMASH 2.0 will help deliver on our customers needs of building a scalable, 'Always-ON' approach to data center infrastructure management."

About the DMTF With more than 4,000 active participants representing 44 countries and nearly 200 organizations, the Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF) is the industry organization leading the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management standards and initiatives. DMTF management technologies are critical to enabling management interoperability among multi-vendor systems, tools, and solutions within the enterprise. By deploying solutions that support DMTF standards, IT managers can choose to deploy a mix of systems and solutions that best meet their users' needs, while reducing management complexity and total cost of ownership. Information about the DMTF technologies and activities can be found at www.dmtf.org.