SNIA Swordfish™ Jumps Out of the Water

The line that SNIA Scalable Storage Management (SSM) Technical Work Group (TWG) cast has been rising quickly and just in time for the Storage Developer Conference (SDC). On September 19th, the new SNIA Swordfish™ 1.0 specification will be ready to jump out of the water.
 
An extension to the Distributed Management Task Force’s (DMTF) Redfish specification, SNIA Swordfish helps to provide a unified approach for the management of storage and servers in hyperscale and cloud infrastructure environments, making it easier for IT administrators to integrate scalable solutions into their data centers.
 
Announcing completion of SNIA Swordfish 1.0 work-in-progress, SNIA’s Storage Management Initiative (SMI) will be all-hands-on-deck at SDC, participating as a Silver Sponsor and host of the Tuesday evening reception. Attend one of three sessions for a deep-dive into Swordfish & Redfish and you’ll have a chance to win a Phantom 3 Drone at either of the Swordfish sessions. You can also be one of the first to own a Swordfish T-shirt by just stopping by the booth.
 
Please also visit the SNIA SMI Booth #2371 at Microsoft Ignite in Atlanta, September 26-30, or click here for more information about SNIA Swordfish. 

Q&A with SNIA Technical Council Chair, Mark Carlson

Recently, SNIA on Storage sat down with Mark Carlson, Chair of the SNIA Technical Council (TC) to discuss his views on the storage industry, customer pain points,  some of the exciting new work happening within the 13 SNIA Technical Work Groups (TWGs), and how non-members can now get involved with SNIA. Read the Q&A here.

Intro to Containers, Container Storage Challenges and Docker
October 6, 2016
Chad Thibodeau, Veritas
Keith Hudgins, Docker
Alex McDonald, NetApp
 
Containers are the latest in what are new and innovative ways of packaging, managing and deploying distributed applications. In this webcast, we’ll introduce the concept of containers, what they are and the advantages they bring, illustrated by use cases, why you might want to consider them as an app deployment model, and how they differ from VMs or bare metal deployments. Join us for this discussion on:

• Application deployment history
• Containers vs. VMs vs. bare metal
• Factors driving containers and common use cases
• Storage ecosystem and features
• Container storage table stakes
• Introduction to Docker
• Key takeaways from DockerCon 2016

Storage Performance Benchmarking: File Components
October 20, 2016
Ken Cantrell, NetApp
Mark Rogov, EMC
 
The storage performance benchmarking dynamic duo, Mark Rogov and Ken Cantrell, are back. Having covered storage performance benchmarking fundamentals, system under test, and most recently block components, this fourth installment of the Webcast series will focus on File Components. 

Register now to learn why the File World is different from the Block World. Mark and Ken will walk through the basic filesystem theory to how filesystem data layout affects performance, covering:

• Why file?
• Local vs. shared filesystems
• Compare and contrast typical file performance use cases

SNIA’s Data Storage Security Summit Provides Continuing Education Credits

SNIA’s Data Storage Security Summit will take place in Santa Clara,CA on September 22nd. Summit attendees who currently hold either ISC2 or ISACA professional certifications can earn up to 7 Continuing Professional Education credits while attending the Data Storage Security Summit. This is another benefit of attending the Summit which will feature keynote presentations, panel discussions from industry experts, and two education tracks that will cover topics including data storage security challenges, privacy, IoT, and encryption.
 
Registration is complimentary. Get details on agenda and registration here.

1-Day Intensive Training for the SNIA Storage Foundations Exam (S10-110)

When: Thursday, September 22nd
Where: Hyatt Regency Santa Clara, CA
Attend this 1-day workshop that gives an overview on the SNIA Storage Networking Foundations Exam (SN-110) objectives and provides you with many key aspects and elements of storage technology as it pertains to data centers. Visit here to view the agenda and register or email course_registration@snia.org.

Practice Exam Now Available for SNIA Storage Foundations Certification

For storage professionals interested in obtaining the new SNIA Certified Storage Professional Certification, SNIA has developed a practice exam that will help determine if you have the skill set to pass the Certification exam. The practice exam is free of charge, and is available here.
 
Other training options for SNIA’s Foundations Certification are available here.

• Cloud Object Storage – You’ve Got Questions, We’ve Got Answers
• The Changing World of SNIA Technical Work – A Conversation with Technical Council Chair Mark Carlson
• Q&A – OpenStack Mitaka and Data Protection
• Principles of Networked Solid State Storage – Q&A
• Storage Security: Fibre Channel Security

Storage Developer Conference Begins in Less Than 2 Weeks 

August was a busy month for the SNIA Solid State, Persistent Memory, and Storage Management communities with a presence at Flash Memory Summit (FMS) and Intel Developer Forum (IDF).  At FMS, Board Vice-Chair Jim Pappas from Intel led an SSSI-sponsored Forum on Persistent Memory featuring SNIA speakers from HP, Mellanox, Microsoft, and Symbolic IO, with a PM application discussion by SAP HANA. The SNIA NVDIMM SIG sponsored a panel on current and future memory advances, and the SSSI hosted a networking reception. Multiple vendor NVDIMM demonstrations were the highlight of the exhibit area. Read more about the event and how to download proceedings under the "News" tab here.

At IDF, SNIA again featured a multivendor NVDIMM demo with systems from SIG members AgigA Tech, Micron, Netlist, and SMART Modular, and software from SNIA member Plexistor.  Also at IDF, the SNIA Storage Management Initiative was featured at the DMTF booth discussing SNIA Swordfish™, an extension to the DMTF Redfish^TM specification for scalable storage management.   Hear more on SNIA's persistent memory and SNIA Swordfish activities at Storage Developer Conference and Microsoft Ignite events in September.