In the News

By Lyle Smith
The adoption of the Enterprise and Data Center Standard Form Factor (EDSFF) has been a hot topic in the enterprise storage industry over the past few years. And now, it seems like OCP is ready to push the adoption further with its new updated specifications during its presentation at this year’s Global Summit.

By Chris Mellor
A standard comparison metric will be needed if businesses are to meaningfully understand the carbon emission load of their storage systems. Who better than a storage industry body to produce such a measurement process? The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has stepped forward and has its Emerald program looking at storage device energy efficiency and measurement.

Association celebrating 25 years in storage industry

By Jean-Jacques Maleval
This SNIA white paper describes storage device-level (individual storage drive) power efficiency test methodologies, the device test harness, the use of workloads, calculating metrics and reporting device test results. The Green Storage TWG is now developing a complementary storage device-level spec for a standardized, easy-to-use, cost-effective method for power efficiency measurement and is seeking industry regulatory bodies as well as technical and supply chain stakeholders to participate in the further development.

By Chris Mellor
The SNIA has set up a Blockchain Storage Committee  to address the needs of the technical community’s desire to engage in alliance-building and marketplace-driven activities.

By Doron Pinhas
Ransomware attacks are growing more frequent and intense for obvious reasons. If you’re taking your first storage-security steps, we urgently recommend getting to know prominent storage & backup security guidelines and frameworks. Examples include the NIST Security Guidelines for Storage Infrastructure (published in 2020), ISO 27040 (published in 2015), and SNIA’s storage security publications.

By Philippe Nicolas
The theme for this annual rendezvous was Empowering Open essentially covered by optics, CXL (Compute Express Link) and networking via keynotes, sessions, workshops, forum and symposium. We count 75 sponsors and 64 exhibitors plus a few associations such DMTF, OpenInfra, OpenPower and SNIA. There were over 3,500 people physically present not counting online from all over the world. The OCP Foundation mentioned that the OCP ecosystem has represented $18 billion in 2021 with a trajectory to be $36 billion by 2026.

By Jamie Marshall
There was a time when Open Source (OS) technologies were fringe. How have these technologies, which can be modified by anyone with the know-how and often come with no security guarantees or community support, overcome the risks and vulnerabilities that have historically put off big business? Especially when it comes to data storage: with data one of our most valuable assets, we need to know it’s protected. We spoke to a number of industry experts including SNIA EMEA Chair, Alex McDonald.

By Jocelyn Timperley
DNA Data Storage Alliance is looking at how we can ensure we'll be able to decode the data in future centuries. One of its working groups, the Rosetta Stone Group, is looking at how to create a universal guide for how to read their DNA storage archive.

By Frederica Monsone, A3 Communication
SNIA EMEA Chair, Alex McDonald, doesn't mince his words: "I like open source projects for their initial impact and vision, but they can lead to poor maintenance processes and unresponsiveness over the longer term as well as a lack of developmental direction as they mature. Faster does not automatically mean better."

By Frederica Monsone, A3 Communication
SNIA EMEA Chair, Alex McDonald, doesn't mince his words: "I like open source projects for their initial impact and vision, but they can lead to poor maintenance processes and unresponsiveness over the longer term as well as a lack of developmental direction as they mature. Faster does not automatically mean better."

SNIA EMEA’s chair, Alex McDonald comments on Open Source as one of the 15 experts

By Stephen Pritchard
SNIA EMEA: Alex McDonald, SNIA EMEA Chair says that edge storage includes “storage and memory product technologies that provide residences for edge-generated data include SSDs, SSD arrays, embedded DRAM [dynamic random-access memory], flash and persistent memory”.

Alex McDonald, SNIA EMEA chair comments about Open Source technologies

During the Storage Developer Conference (September 12-15, 2022), Chelsio demonstrates technologies that illustrate how T7 DPU solutions offering high-speed Ethernet storage networking complement modern application and storage architectures.

Software-defined technologies are a crucial building block for cloud and storage developers, and SDC is a great opportunity to get new advances out to the community,” said Eric Ries, SVP, Memory Storage Strategy Division (MSSD), KIOXIA America, Inc.

by Joel Khalili
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has released the first edition of a new set of standards designed to clear the way for a new breed of storage products: CSxes.

Supporting the efforts of software architects and other programmers, SNIA has developed new standards designed to promote interoperability across the many Compute-Storage-Devices in development."

by Dan Robinson
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has at last published version 1.0 of its Computational Storage Architecture and Programming Model, the specs meant to help develop the new performance-boosting tech by providing interoperability between different vendors.

In 2022, storage vendors returned to in-person shows. This data storage conference list continues to update as vendors add events and provide more detail on current ones. Editor includes 2 SNIA events: Persistent Memory+Computational Storage Summit and Storage Developers Conference ’22.

Leaders of flash memory and solid state storage technology innovation and industry expansion

by Stephen Pritchard

Businesses face the need to store ever-larger volumes of information, across a growing number of formats.

“The criteria to consider are the volume, the data gravity – where it is being generated, where it is being used, computed or consumed – security, bandwidth, regulations, latency, cost, change rate, transfer required and cost,” says Olivier Fraimbault, a board director at SNIA EMEA.

SNIA is sponsoring the System Architectures track, Cloud Storage and Applications, Data Center Applications, DNA Data Storage, Security and Cryptography, SSD Technology, and Sustainability.

by Stephen Pritchard

Effective backups need to ensure all data is protected, and to track media and software changes. Although companies now make more use of automated backup management and even artificial intelligence (AI), these are not infallible. “Unfortunately, there is no backup tool that detects infrastructure components that are not backed up,” says Alex MacDonald, chair of SNIA EMEA.

by Ryan Arel

"The individual vendors-specific certification programs are now compliant with these industry-standard definitions and concepts; as such, the need for the SNCP was no longer a priority," Metz said. "This has allowed SNIA to focus on expanding the online educational library of vendor-neutral materials, such as blogs, videos, webcasts and SNIA Storage Developer Conferences."

by Chris Mellor
The DNA Storage Alliance Technology Affiliate will aim to standardize interfaces, methods, and best practices to create a global interoperable ecosystem from which both solution providers and clients will benefit. A technical group will develop physical standards, logical and software standards and quality standards to ensure the customers get the best systems.

by Tom Coughlin
SNIA held its Persistent Memory and Computational Storage Summit focused on exploring the latest developments in these topics. Let’s explore some of the insights from that virtual conference from the first day.

“We are committed to actively participating and engaging with the group as a voting member to help guide the implementation of new standards for the storage industry,” said Emily M. Leproust, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Twist.

by Eric Smith

Through organisations such as SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association) and the Linux Foundation, Samsung and Western Digital will define high-level models and frameworks for next-generation Zoned Storage technologies. With a commitment to enable open and scalable data center architectures, they have founded the Zoned Storage TWG (Technical Work Group). The group is already defining and specifying common use cases for Zoned Storage devices and host/device architecture and programming models.

by Paul Crocetti
Every season is conference season now. Storage-focused conferences — as well as more general IT shows that feature a storage element — include some of the biggest names in IT and SNIA Persistent Memory + Computational Storage Summit makes the list.

by Tom Coughlin
Storage and memory technologies are changing to support big data applications. This article by Tom Coughlin, IEEE Fellow and SNIA member, in Computer, published by the IEEE Computer Society, discusses trends in computational storage, ComputeExpress LinkTM, NVMe®, and more with experts from CXLTM, NVM Express®, and SNIA®.

Tom Coughlin, Contributor

A virtual roundtable article on some digital storage and memory topics where I collected comments on trends in NVMe storage, CXL, heterogenous memory and object storage for the January 2022 IEEE Computer Magazine (published by the IEEE Computer Society).  This piece looks at a few of the insights and SNIA mentions from that article.

DMTF Announces its Security and Platform Data Model (SPDM) specifications As a DMTF Alliance Partner, SNIA has provided input into this specification to create a common security framework.