Operating environment

To use the system, you must meet the minimum hardware and software requirements and ensure that other operating environment criteria are met.

Supported hosts

Fibre Channel now supports direct connection, in addition to storage area network (SAN). The only method not supporting a direct connection is Fibre Channel over Ethernet.

SAN fabric function is available only if a Fibre Channel option is installed. Otherwise, this information does not apply.

In a storage area network (SAN) environment, host systems are application servers that access data from the storage controllers that are connected to the SAN. Hosts that are running in a number of operating environments can connect to the storage by using the system.

For a list of the supported host operating systems, see the following website:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/support/storage/ssic/interoperability.wss

Multipathing software

For information about multipathing software, see http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/support/storage/ssic/interoperability.wss

User interfaces

The system provides these user interfaces:

The management GUI, a web-accessible graphical user interface (GUI) that supports flexible and rapid access to storage management information.
A command-line interface (CLI) that uses Secure Shell (SSH).
Service assistant, a web application that helps troubleshoot and resolve problems on a node canister.

Application programming interfaces

The system provides an application programming interface that is called the Common Information Model (CIM) agent. The CIM agent supports the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) of the Storage Network Industry Association.