SNIA Developer Conference September 15-17, 2025 | Santa Clara, CA
Abstract
Are you a control freak? Have you ever wondered what was the difference between a storage controller, a RAID controller, a PCIe Controller, or a metadata controller? What about an NVMe controller? Aren’t they all the same thing?
In part Aqua of the “Everything You Wanted To Know About Storage But Were Too Proud To Ask” webcast series, we’re going to be taking an unusual step of focusing on a term that is used constantly, but often has different meanings. When you have a controller that manages hardware, there are very different requirements than a controller that manages an entire system-wide control plane. From the outside looking in, it may be easy to get confused. You can even have controllers managing other controllers!
Here we’ll be revisiting some of the pieces we talked about in Part Chartreuse [https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/663/215131], but with a bit more focus on the variety we have to play with:
- What do we mean when we say “controller?”
- How are the systems being managed different?
- How are controllers used in various storage entities: drives, SSDs, storage networks, software-defined
- How do controller systems work, and what are the trade-offs?
- How do storage controllers protect against Spectre and Meltdown?
Join us to learn more about the workhorse behind your favorite storage systems.