Fortune 100 Global Bank Builds its Own Hyperscaled Storage

A Fortune 100 global bank built its own hyperscaled storage from best-in-class commodity storage components such as solid state disks and hard drives. This is a trend enterprises should be following closely. Learn more in this article, “Real-World Hyperscaled Enterprise Storage,” from the SNIA Cloud Storage and Data Protection and Capacity Optimization Committee.

SNIA Members Provide Leading-edge Equipment to SMI-Lab

Over the years, industry leaders, including HPE and NetApp have provided hardware for use in SNIA’s SMI-Lab program. As SNIA Storage Management Initiative members, these companies found value in having their equipment used with vendor-neutral test tools to help validate the compliance and interoperability of products that implement the SMI-S standard.

Pure Storage is the most recent SNIA SMI member to generously step forward, providing its award-winning FlashArray storage system to be used with virtual machines in the SMI-Lab. The Pure Storage system can consolidate applications with consistent sub-microsecond latency and hundreds of terabytes of usable space, and is a valuable addition to equipment housed in the SNIA Technology Center.

“The collaborative SMI-Lab program is important for helping companies increase the rapid deployment of interoperable storage networks and expanding vendors’ addressable markets,” said Barkz (Rob Barker), Technical Director, Cloud Automation & Microsoft, Pure Storage. “We see great value in participating in SMI-Lab Plugfests and are pleased to provide our always-on, always-fast equipment to enhance the lab environment.”

Meet the 2017 SNIA Board of Directors

As a globally recognized and trusted authority, SNIA’s mission is to lead the storage industry in developing and promoting vendor-neutral architectures, standards and educational services that facilitate the efficient management, movement and security of information. "At this time of profound change in the storage industry, SNIA is focused on the hottest data storage trends, delivering standards, technology enablement, and educational materials that enable IT to derive the maximum benefit from the new infrastructures and technologies” said David Dale, SNIA Chairman.

The 2017 SNIA Board is key to leading the execution of the SNIA mission. The 2017 Board consists of representatives from Cisco Systems, Fujitsu America, Hitachi Data Systems, HPE, IBM Systems, Intel Corporation, NetApp, Oracle, Samsung Electronics, Symbolic IO, and Toshiba.

New Members

SNIA welcomes new members:

Featured Video

NVM Programming - Interview with Doug Voigt

Doug Voigt of HPE and chair of the SNIA NVM Programming Technical Work Group, discusses how the NVM Programming Model paves the way for adoption of new persistent memory technology from an application point of view.

Upcoming Webcasts

NVDIMM - Applications are Here
January 10, 2017
SNIA NVDIMM Special Interest Group

Get a glimpse of the future of Persistent Memory. Join SNIA NVDIMM Special Interest Group in another in our series of webcasts on the NVDIMM Cookbook - How to incorporate NVDIMM into your systems and what non-volatile DIMM applications are now available. We'll even highlight some of the "knobs" to turn to optimize use of NVDIMM in your applications to ease the way to simple, plug-n-play adoption.

Introduction to Swordfish: Scalable Storage Management
January 24, 2017
Richelle Ahlvers, Chair, SNIA Scalable Storage Mgt TWG, Broadcom

The SNIA Swordfish™ specification 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. Created by SNIA’s Scalable Storage Management Technical Work Group (SSM TWG), SNIA Swordfish builds on the Distributed Management Task Force’s (DMTF’s) Redfish specification using the same easy-to-use RESTful methods and lightweight JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) formatting. This session will present an overview of SNIA Swordfish including the new functionality added in version 1.1 released in January 2017.

Everything You Wanted To Know about Storage But Were Too Proud To Ask: Buffering
February 14, 2017
J Metz, Cisco
Mark Rogov, Dell EMC
Dave Minturn, Intel
Rob Davis, Mellanox
Ken Cantrell, NetApp
Alex McDonald, NetApp

Buffers and Queues are part of every data center architecture and a critical part of performance – both in improving it as well as hindering it. Knowing how buffers and queues work in storage can help make your storage system shine. In this pod of the “Too Proud To Ask” series, we’re going to be demystifying this very important aspect of data center storage. You’ll learn:

What are buffers, caches, and queues, and why you should care about the differences?
What’s the difference between a read cache and a write cache?
What does “queue depth” mean?
What’s a buffer, a ring buffer, and host memory buffer, and why does it matter?
What happens when things go wrong?

These are just some of the topics we’ll cover, and while it won’t be an exhaustive look at buffers, caches and queues, you’ll get insight into this important, yet often overlooked, part of storage design.

Long-term Data Retention: Challenges, Standards and Best Practices
February 16, 2017
Simona Rabinovici-Cohen, IBM
Phillip Viani, IBM
Sam Fineberg

While the move from paper to digital information over the past decades has greatly improved information access, it complicates information preservation due to digital format changes, media obsolescence, media failure, and loss of contextual metadata. The Self-contained Information Retention Format (SIRF) facilitates long-term data storage and preservation. It provides an effective and efficient way to preserve and secure digital information for many decades, even with the ever-changing technology landscape. Join this webcast to learn:

Key challenges of long-term data retention
How the SIRF format works and its key elements
How SIRF supports different storage containers - disks, tapes, CDMI and the cloud
Availability of Open SIRF

Education and Certification

More Study Options Available for SNIA Certification!

SNIA is changing the way study guides and materials are made available. In addition to the standard classroom environment, training materials and study guides are now available via e-book, pdf, YouTube, BrightTALK webcasts, podcasts, printed books and online instructor led courses.

Check out more ways to prepare for SNIA Certification exams:
Study Guides and Online Instruction *New study guides available*
YouTube Videos
SNIA Webcasts

To date, SNIA has certified over 12,000 storage professionals worldwide through our vendor-neutral certification program.

White Papers and Articles

Featured Events

Participate in the SNIA Annual Members' Symposium

SNIA Members: Join your colleagues for networking, working group meetings, keynote presentations, and other valuable workshops and sessions at the SNIA Annual Members' Symposium in San Jose on January 17-20. Participation and meals are complimentary. View the agenda and register here.

ENERGY STAR® Storage Stakeholders Meeting – January 19, 2017

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) invites stakeholders to join EPA for a discussion of recent storage developments and applicable data analysis in support of upcoming ENERGY STAR Version 1.1 and Version 2.0 specification developments. EPA will host this meeting on January 19, 2017 from 8:30-5pm in conjunction with the SNIA Members’ Symposium at The Westin San Jose, San Jose, CA. Planned discussion topics will include:

Latest analysis of available product data
The Green Grid (TGG) Point-of-View white paper conclusions
Emerald V3.0 specification overview
File-access test procedure overview
Discussion on taxonomy updates
New storage technologies and emerging trends discussion

A call-in option, additional meeting details, and finalized agenda will be provided in a follow-up email closer to the event. RSVP here if you plan to attend. Please contact Katharine Kaplan, EPA, 202-343-9120 or John Clinger, ICF, or 215-967-9407 for questions.

Don't Miss the Persistent Memory Summit on January 18!

On January 18th SNIA's 5th annual Persistent Memory Summit will bring leaders together to examine the current state and future opportunities in Persistent Memory. You won't want to miss presentations from Intel, Microsemi, VMware, Open Fabrics Alliance, SAP HANA, UC San Diego, Red Hat, Microsoft, SNIA NVDIMM SIG, Western Digital, Spin Transfer, and Xitore, as well as live Persistent Memory demonstrations. Join us at the Westin San Jose or watch the live stream on the SNIAVideo YouTube channel! Registration is complimentary, but limited. Register today.

Find SNIA at these Events

SNIA Members' Symposium - San Jose, CA - January 17-20, 2017
Persistent Memory Summit - San Jose, CA - January 18, 2017
EPA-SNIA-TGG Industry Stakeholders' Meeting - San Jose, CA - January 19, 2017
SNIA SMI Plugfest - Colorado Springs, CO - January 23 - February 3, 2017
Container World - Santa Clara, CA - February 21-23, 2017
USENIX FAST - Santa Clara, CA - February 27 - March 2, 2017

In Memoriam

In Memoriam, Michael Willett

SNIA colleague and friend, Michael Willett, passed away December 23, 2016 in Raleigh NC. Michael graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy and earned a Masters and PhD in Mathematics from North Carolina State University. He had a distinguished career as a professor at UNC Greensboro and at numerous technology companies including IBM, Fiderus, Wave Systems, Seagate Research, Samsung, and most recently Bright Plaza, where he co-founded the Drive Trust Alliance.

Michael volunteered at SNIA as a tutorial developer and presenter and was the author of 13 SNIA storage security tutorials sharing his expertise on data encryption. He presented these SNIA Tutorials to enthusiastic audiences, was consistently ranked as one of the top presenters, and received SNIA's “Outstanding Tutorial Speaker Award” in 2012. Michael was an engaging and congenial speaker, always ready to communicate his security knowledge in an easy-to-understand way.

"Clearly Michael was one of the storage security pioneers,” commented Eric Hibbard, SNIA Security Technical Work Group Co-Chair. Michael was part of the leadership of TCG Storage Work Group back in the 2005 timeframe and for many years thereafter, and chaired the OASIS Privacy Management Reference Model Technical Committee (PMRM TC), which has developed an operational reference model for implementing privacy requirements. As a recognized expert in self-encrypting drives and encryption-related materials, Michael spoke at a number of industry events - most recently at the September 2016 27K Security Summit where he presented ISO/IEC 27040 and Self-Encrypting Storage. Our lasting SNIA memory of Michael will be his leadership of a lively panel on Data Security vs. Recovery (think: Apple/FBI) and at the most recent SNIA Data Storage Security Summit in September 2016.

SNIA will remember his leadership, his expertise, his friendship, and his willingness to dive into all things technical on security. Michael will surely be missed. Condolences may be sent to his family here.

We value your feedback. Please send any comments or suggestions to the SNIA Matters editor, Diane Marsili.