The SNIA Storage Developer Conference (SDC) is coming up September 24-27, 2018 at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara CA.  The agenda is now live! SNIA on Storage is teaming up with the SNIA Technical Council to dive into major themes of the 2018 conference.  The SNIA Technical Council takes a leadership role to develop the content for each SDC, so SNIA on Storage spoke with Bill Martin, SNIA Technical Council Co-Chair and SSD I/O Standards at Samsung Electronics, to understand why SDC is bringing NVMe and NVMe-oF to conference attendees. SNIA On Storage (SOS): What is NVMe and why is SNIA emphasizing it as one of their key areas of focus for SDC? Bill Martin (BM):  NVMe^TM, also known as NVM Express^R, is an open collection of standards and information to fully expose the benefits of non-volatile memory (NVM) in all types of computing environments from mobile to data center. SNIA is very supportive of NVMe.  In fact, earlier this year, SNIA, the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), and the NVM Express organizations formed a new alliance to coordinate standards for managing solid state drive (SSD) storage devices. This alliance brings together multiple standards for managing the issue of scale-out management of SSDs.  It’s designed to enable an all-inclusive management experience by improving the interoperable management of information technologies. With interest both from within and outside of SNIA from architects, developers, and implementers on how these standards work, the SNIA Technical Council decided to bring even more sessions on this important area to the SDC audience this year. We are proud to include 16 sessions on NVMe topics over the four days of the conference. SOS:  What will I learn about NVMe at SDC? Performance is always of interest to storage developers.  We’ll have a session on accelerating storage with NVMe SSDs, and several others on the Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK), with a historical perspective on key design decisions and a discussion on the driver’s advantages and limitations. In other sessions, attendees can get an update on how the Fibre Channel industry is combining the lossless, highly deterministic nature of Fibre Channel with NVMe, and learn how to deploy in-storage computing with the NVMe interface. SOS:  I’ve heard a lot recently about something called NVMe-oF.  What is that and are there any sessions on it at SDC? BM:  NVMe-oF is an acronym for NVMe over Fabrics, and SDC will cover how both the NVMe interface and NVMe-oF underlying protocols (such as RoCE, iWARP and FC) provide a highly efficient access to flash storage. Attendees will learn how architects are rethinking Ceph architecture for disaggregation using NVMe over Fabrics, how to manage storage services using NVMe-oF based on SNIA Swordfish^TM and DMTF Redfish^TM management interfaces, and how to deliver scalable distributed block storage using NVMe-oF. SOS:  I see in the SDC agenda that you’ll be speaking on Key Value Storage.  Can you explain this topic and how SNIA is involved in this area? BM:  A number of applications and companies are now contemplating using a different type of storage interface. The NVMe Key Value project is a proposal for a new command structure to access data on an NVMe controller. This proposed command set provides a key and a value to store data on the Non-Volatile media and provides a key to retrieve data stored on the media. The primary interface work is being done within the NVMe technical working group. What SNIA is doing within their Object Drive Technical Work Group is an application programming interface, known as an API.  We expect to have a document ready for review by SDC, and my session on Monday September 24 at 2:30 pm will discuss where we are in the SNIA standardization process of a Key Value API. SOS: How can I get “prepped” on NVMe before SDC? BM:  I would check out two videos on NVMe on the SNIA Video Channel, both by SNIA Board Member J Metz.  One is a snapshot on NVMe, NVMe-oF, and Ethernet Storage with directions to more resources:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=yh68WIj68XI The other is his presentation from Storage Field Day on SNIA and NVMe-over-Fabrics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfcZwkPzj4w Another great resource is the SNIA Podcasts on NVMe and many other topics – located at https://www.snia.org/events/storage-developer/podcasts SOS: Any final thoughts on NVMe? BM:  On behalf of the SNIA Technical Council, I would like to invite everyone at SDC and in the Silicon Valley technology community to come to the Birds of a Feather session on Tuesday September 25 at 7:00 pm and join the local Bay Area NVMe Meetup group for an open discussion on NVMe technology.  We’ll have leading experts from Cisco Systems, Eideticom, Samsung, SK hynix, and Toshiba Memory on hand to discuss some of their latest projects and answer questions on implementing or using solutions based on the NVMe standard.  This session is open to anyone interested in NVMe and does not require an SDC badge, so invite your colleagues to join us in the Stevens Creek room at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara. SOS:  Thanks for your time, Bill, and see you at SDC!

Reviews are in for the 20^th Storage Developer Conference (SDC) and they are thumbs up! The 2017 SDC was the largest ever- expanding to four full days with seven keynotes, five SNIA Tutorials, and 92 sessions.  The SNIA Technical Council, who oversees conference content, compiled a rich agenda of 18 topic categories focused on technology growth markets of physical storage, storage management, data, object storage, and cloud storage.  Storage Architecture led the way with 20 individual sessions, followed by 15 Solid State/Non-Volatile Memory, eight SMB, and six NVMe sessions.  Storage management, including SMI and SNIA Swordfish® presentations, had an entire track with eight sessions on Thursday. Attendees called out a number of sessions as their favorites - and the ratings proved it.  But don’t be alarmed if you missed out – SNIA has recordings and downloads of the presentations at your fingertips.  Check out these top-rated sessions and more:

• Remote Persistent Memory With Nothing But Net by Tom Talpey of Microsoft, discussing RDMA NIC as a Persistent Memory storage adapter and the steps to get there
• Programming the Path by James Cain of Snell Advanced Media, on virtual file systems
• Self-Optimizing Caches by Irfan Ahmad of CachePhysics, on how you can work towards a self-optimizing data path
• SoftFlash by Jae Do of Microsoft Research, on programmable storage in future data centers

Attendees were also treated to NVMe and Persistent Memory demonstrations by SDC sponsors, three Plugfests, and a host of networking conversations happening up and down the hallways.  The “high caliber speakers and presentation content”, learning about "recent developments in the industry", and “connecting directly with other developers who are tackling the same problems” were cited by attendees as some of the most beneficial aspects of the conference. Whether you participated in person or virtually by viewing videos, downloading presentations, or listening to podcasts, let us know what you would like to see for future SDCs.  Is it Modern Storage for Modern Data Centers? NVMe and NVMe-oF? Persistent Memory and PM-oF? Artificial intelligence? New directions?  We want to know!  Watch for our Post Event Survey to be sent out shortly.  And thank you for contributing to a great 2017 SDC!

SNIA's 18th Storage Developer Conference is officially a success, with 124 general and breakout sessions;  Cloud Interoperability, Kinetic Storage, and SMB3 plugfests; ten Birds-of-a-Feather Sessions, and amazing networking among 450+ attendees.  Sessions on NVMe over Fabrics won the title of most attended, but Persistent Memory, Object Storage, and Performance were right behind.  Many thanks to SDC 2016 Sponsors, who engaged attendees in exciting technology discussions. For those not familiar with SDC, this technical industry event is designed for a variety of storage technologists at various levels from developers to architects to product managers and more.  And, true to SNIA's commitment to educating the industry on current and future disruptive technologies, SDC content is now available to all - whether you attended or not - for download and viewing. You'll want to stream keynotes from Citigroup, Toshiba, DSSD, Los Alamos National Labs, Broadcom, Microsemi, and Intel - they're available now on demand on SNIA's YouTube channel, SNIAVideo. All SDC presentations are now available for download; and over the next few months, you can continue to download SDC podcasts which combine audio and slides. The first podcast from SDC 2016 - on hyperscaler (as well as all 2015 SDC Podcasts) are available here, and more will be available in the coming weeks. SNIA thanks all its members and colleagues who contributed to make SDC a success! A special thanks goes out to the SNIA Technical Council, a select group of acknowledged industry experts who work to guide SNIA technical efforts. In addition to driving the agenda and content for SDC, the Technical Council oversees and manages SNIA Technical Work Groups, reviews architectures submitted by Work Groups, and is the SNIA's technical liaison to standards organizations. Learn more about these visionary leaders at http://www.snia.org/about/organization/tech_council. And finally, don't forget to mark your calendars now for SDC 2017 - September 11-14, 2017, again at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara. Watch for the Call for Presentations to open in February 2017.

Ethernet technology had been a proven standard for over 30 years and there are many networked storage solutions based on Ethernet. While storage devices are evolving rapidly with new standards and specifications, Ethernet is moving towards higher speeds as well: 10Gbps, 25Gbps, 50Gbps and 100Gbps….making it time to re-introduce Ethernet Networked Storage.

That’s exactly what Rob Davis and I plan to do on August 4^th in a live SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum Webcast, “Re-Introducing Ethernet Networked Storage.” We will start by providing a solid foundation on Ethernet networked storage and move to the latest advancements, challenges, use cases and benefits. You’ll hear:

• The evolution of storage devices – spinning media to NVM
• New standards: NVMe and NVMe over Fabric
• A retrospect of traditional networked storage including SAN and NAS
• How new storage devices and new standards would impact Ethernet networked storage
• Ethernet based software-defined storage and the hyper-converged model
• A look ahead at new Ethernet technologies optimized for networked storage in the future

I hope you will join us on August 4^th at 10:00 a.m. PT. We’re confident you will learn some new things about Ethernet networked storage. Register today!

Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) has piqued the interest of many people in the storage world. Using a robust, efficient, and highly flexible transportation protocol for SSDs, Flash, and future Non-Volatile Memory storage devices, the NVM Express group is working on extending these advantages over a networked Fabric.

Our first Webcast on The Performance Impact of NVMe over Fabrics was very well received. If you missed it, check-it out on-demand. On December 15^th, Dave Minturn, Storage Architect at Intel, will join me for a deeper dive in a live Webcast, “Under the Hood with NVMe over Fabrics.” At this Webcast we’ll explain not only what NVMe over Fabrics is, but also specifically pay attention to how it works. We’ll be exploring:

• Key terms and concepts
• Differences between NVMe-based fabrics and SCSI-based fabrics
• Practical examples of NVMe over Fabrics solutions
• Important future considerations

Register now and join us as we discuss the next iteration of NVMe. I hope to “see” you on the 15^th when Dave and I will be anxious to answer your questions.