The SNIA Common HBA API is an industry standard, programming interface for accessing management information in Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBA). Developed through the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), the HBA API has been overwhelmingly adopted by Storage Area Network vendors to help manage, monitor, and deploy storage area networks in an interoperable way.

Agilent, Emulex, Interphase, JNI, and Qlogic, TROIKA Networks have all publicly announced their support for the HBA API. You should check with your individual vendor if they are not listed here.

The HBA API effort began in March of 2000 in the SNIA Fibre Channel working group. In May of 2000, the HBA API subgroup was formed. In July of 2000 the 1.0 feature set was frozen and the initial draft submitted to the T11 FC-MI standards group. Version 1.0 was approved by the SNIA Fibre Channel working group in September of 2000 and is currently undergoing review as part of the T11 FC-MI Letter Ballot process.

The latest version of the HBA API 2.0 specification is still in development. The latest version of this document will be added to the Fibre Channel working group FTP site shortly.

You should join the SNIA Fibre Channel working groups, which hold in-face meetings, conference calls, and discusses issues over the email reflector. More information about the SNIA can be found at http://www.snia.org. If you are already a member of the SNIA, you can get the browse the current mail archives of the Fibre Channel working group at: Not yet, however there has been discussion on adding iSCSI support in the future.

The HBA API does not directly support CIM. However, the HBA API exposes information which can be exported to CIM providers. part of the SNIA Interoperability labs, a Java Native Interface (JNI) provider and corresponding CIM provider modeling the Fibre Channel adapter CIM model was created. This can be found as part of the SNIA CIM efforts. This can be found on the SourceForge site at http://sourceforge.net/projects/hbaprovider/

During the first Storage Networking World conference with the HBA API demo the following vendors endorsed the HBA API Interoperability Theme: Adaptec, Agilent, BMC Software, Brocade, Connex, EMC, Emulex, FCIA, FibreAlliance, HP, Highground, Hitachi Data Systems, Interphase, InterSAN, JNI, Legato, McData, NCITS, Prisa, Qlogic, StorageNetworks, SNIA, Tivoli, TROIKA Networks, Veritas, and Vixel. Other vendors also have announced their support since that time.

There are no calls in the current HBA API which are able to read or write data from storage, or otherwise affect SAN operation. All current SCSI calls in the HBA API are informational (read-only) calls. However, the CT passthrough command does allow read and write of information from a switch, if allowed. The HBA API is implemented as a common library which depends on vendor-specific libraries for specific HBA model support.

You should work directly with your HBA vendor for development support for the HBA API. However, most questions about the HBA API specification can be answered by getting involved in the SNIA Fibre Channel working group or by sending your questions to the group at large through the email reflector at snia-snmwg-fc@snia.org.

The HBA API is neither. Information from the HBA API can be usually found through an out-of-band mechanism for management, however can also be accessed in-band through a IP over Fibre Channel connection.

The HBA API consists of three major parts (vendor library, common library, and registration) that are installed on a system to operate. The vendor install software will write a registry entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\SNIA with the location of the vendor-specific library. Vendors will install a vendor library, typically in the same location the vendor stores their driver software. libHBAAPI.

This depends on your application. It is recommended that permissions be limited to trusted logins only or root access.

CA Unicenter, Highground, InterSAN, Legato, Tivoli, SANavigator, Sun Microsystems, Prisa Networks, Veritas, and

This FAQ is intended to address frequently asked questions about the HBA API. This FAQ is maintained by Benjamin F. Kuo at TROIKA Networks, Inc. <benk@troikanetworks.com> and Dixon Hutchinson at Legato Systems, Inc. <dhutchin@legato.com> and is not endorsed or sponsored by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA).

The latest version of the common library and example code is dated January 9, 2001 and can be found at:

libHBAPAI.so is the common library, installed in /usr/lib for 32-bit systems, and the appropriate 64-bit library locations depending on operating system.

No. The scope of the HBA API is limited to discovery of Fibre Channel components. Generic SCSI pass through has been discussed but has been deemed generally dangerous, as it bypasses the operating system protections and also causes several SCSI-related issues (including problems with breaking reservations, potentially corrupting data, or interrupting I/O). As such it is not included in the API.

The initial work on the HBA API was done on Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Solaris 2.6, 2.7, and 2.8. Other operating systems are also planned for support. Version 1.0 of the spec does not support asynchronous event notification, however this capability is a central part of Version 2.0 of the spec (currently in development.)

No tests are currently publicly available, although test and validation efforts are underway in the SNIA Interoperability committee with intent to add these as part of the FCIA SANmark process. In addition, test programs may be available from your HBA vendor.

API stands for Application Programming Interface. You can read the Wikipedia definition, or simply know that the point of an API is to give computers a way to pull what they need from another computer (i.e., PhishTank website) without any human intervention.