The rise of Storage Area Networks (SANs) has generated a need for extended areas of management within the storage environment. With the introduction of Fibre Channel fabric switches, the SANs being deployed now and in the future rely on fabrics for both I/O connectivity and management services. The switched fabric has become an essential source for management information and a target for control. Management applications would benefit from a robust and consistent interface for monitoring and controlling the management services of the fabric.

This standard describes an API to interface into the fabric, to expose the services and data available in the fabric. The Fibre Channel Switch API, SWAPI, is designed to hide data communication implementation details from the caller. Implementation may be via in-band or out-of-band communication to the target switch, and is dependent on the implementation by the switch vendor.