Author: J Metz

NVMe® over Fabrics for Absolute Beginners

J Metz
A while back I write an article entitled “NVMe™ for Absolute Beginners.” It seems to have resonated with a lot of people and it appears there might be a call for doing the same thing for NVMe® over Fabrics (NVMe-oF™). This article is for absolute beginners. If you are a seasoned (or even moderately-experienced) technical person, this probably won’t be news to you. However, you are free (and encouraged!) to point people to this article who need Plain English™ to get started. A Quick Refresher Any time an application on a computer (or server, or even a consumer device like a phone) needs to talk to a storage device, there are a couple of things that you need to have. First, you need to have memory (like RAM), you need to have a CPU, and you also need to have something that can hold onto your data for the long haul (also called storage). Another thing you need to have is a way for the CPU to talk to the memory device (on one hand) and the storage device (on the other). Thing is, CPUs talk a very specific language, and historically memory could speak that language, but storage could not. For many years, things ambled along in this way. The CPU would talk natively with memory, which made it very fast but also was somewhat risky because memory was considered volatile. That is, if there was a power blip (or went out completely), any data in memory would be wiped out. Not fun. Read More

Security & Privacy Regulations: An Expert Q&A

J Metz
Last month the SNIA Networking Storage Forum continued its Storage Networking Security Webcast series with a presentation on Security & Privacy Regulations. We were fortunate to have security experts, Thomas Rivera and Eric Hibbard, explain the current state of regulations related to data protection and data privacy. If you missed it, it’s available on-demand. Q. Do you see the US working towards a national policy around privacy or is it going to stay state-specified? A.  This probably will not happen anytime soon due to political reasons. Having a national policy on privacy is not necessarily a good thing, depending on your state. Such a policy would likely have a preemption clause and could be used to diminish requirements from states like CA and MA. Read More

AIOps Q&A

J Metz
Last month, the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative was fortunate to have artificial intelligence (AI) expert, Parviz Peiravi, explore the topic of AI Operations (AIOps) at our live webcast, “IT Modernization with AIOps: The Journey.” Parviz explained why the journey to cloud native and microservices, and the complexity that comes along with that, requires a rethinking of enterprise architecture. If you missed the live presentation, it’s now available on demand together with the webcast slides. We had some interesting questions from our live audience. As promised, here are answers to them all: Q. Can you please define the Data Lake and how different it is from other data storage models?           Read More

Ready for a Lesson on Security & Privacy Regulations?

J Metz
Worldwide, regulations are being promulgated and aggressively enforced with the intention of protecting personal data. These regulatory actions are being taken to help mitigate exploitation of this data by cybercriminals and other opportunistic groups who have turned this into a profitable enterprise. Failure to meet these data protection requirements puts individuals at risk (e.g., identity theft, fraud, etc.), as well as subjecting organizations to significant harm (e.g., legal penalties). The SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) is going to dive into this topic at our Security & Privacy Regulations webcast on July 28, 2020. We are fortunate to have experts, Eric Hibbard and Thomas Rivera, share their expertise in security standards, data protection and data privacy at this live event.  This webcast will highlight common privacy principles and themes within key privacy regulations. In addition, the related cybersecurity implications will be explored. We’ll also probe a few of the recent regulations/laws to outline interesting challenges due to over and under-specification of data protection requirements (e.g., “reasonable” security). Attendees will have a better understanding of:
  • How privacy and security is characterized
  • Data retention and deletion requirements
  • Core data protection requirements of sample privacy regulations from around the globe
  • The role that security plays with key privacy regulations
  • Data breach implications and consequences
This webcast is part of our Storage Networking Security Webcast Series. I encourage you to watch the presentations we’ve done to date on: And I hope you will register today and join us on July 28th for what is sure to be an interesting look into the history, development and impact of these regulations.   

Key Management FAQ

J Metz

Key management focuses on protecting cryptographic keys from threats and ensuring keys are available when needed. And it’s no small task. That's why the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) invited key management and encryption expert, Judy Furlong, to present a “Key Management 101” session as part our Storage Networking Security Webcast Series. If you missed the live webcast, I encourage you to watch it on-demand as it was highly-rated by attendees. Judy answered many key management questions during the live event, here are answers to those, as well as the ones we did not have time to get to.

Q. How are the keys kept safe in local cache?

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Key Management 101

J Metz
There’s a lot that goes into effective key management. In order to properly use cryptography to protect information, one has to ensure that the associated cryptographic keys themselves are also protected. Careful attention must be paid to how cryptographic keys are generated, distributed, used, stored, replaced and destroyed in order to ensure that the security of cryptographic implementations is not compromised. It’s the next topic the SNIA Networking Storage Forum is going to cover in our Storage Networking Security Webcast Series. Join us on June 10, 2020 for Key Management 101 where security expert and Dell Technologies distinguished engineer, Judith Furlong, will introduce the fundamentals of cryptographic key management. Key (see what I did there?) topics will include:
  • Key lifecycles
  • Key generation
  • Key distribution
  • Symmetric vs. asymmetric key management, and
  • Integrated vs. centralized key management models
In addition, Judith will also dive into relevant standards, protocols and industry best practices. Register today to save your spot for June 10th we hope to see you there.

Hyperscalers Take on NVMe™ Cloud Storage Questions

J Metz
Our recent webcast on how Hyperscalers, Facebook and Microsoft are working together to merge their SSD drive requirements generated a lot of interesting questions. If you missed “How Facebook & Microsoft Leverage NVMe Cloud Storage” you can watch it on-demand. As promised at our live event. Here are answers to the questions we received. Q. How does Facebook or Microsoft see Zoned Name Spaces being used? Read More

How Facebook & Microsoft Leverage NVMe Cloud Storage

J Metz
What do Hyperscalers like Facebook and Microsoft have in common? Find out in our next SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) webcast, How Facebook and Microsoft Leverage NVMe Cloud Storage, on November 19, 2019 where you’ll hear how these cloud market leaders are using NVMe SSDs in their architectures. Our expert presenters, Ross Stenfort, Hardware System Engineer at Facebook and Lee Prewitt, Principal Hardware Program Manager, Azure CSI at Microsoft, will provide a close up look into their application requirements and challenges, why they chose NVMe flash for storage, and how they are successfully deploying NVMe to fuel their businesses. You’ll learn: Read More

Introducing the Storage Networking Security Webcast Series

J Metz
This series of webcasts, hosted by the SNIA Networking Storage Forum, is going to tackle an ambitious project – the scope of securing data, namely storage systems and storage networks. Obviously, many of the concepts and realities contained in this series are going to be broadly applicable to all kinds of data protection, but there are some aspects of security that have a unique impact on storage, storage systems, and storage networks. Because of the fact that security is a holistic concern, there has to be more than “naming the parts.” It’s important to understand how the pieces fit together, because it’s where those joints exist that many of the threats become real. Understanding Storage Security and Threats This presentation is going to go into the broad introduction of security principles in general. Read More

Author of NVMe™/TCP Spec Answers Your Questions

J Metz

900 people have already watched our SNIA Networking Storage Forum webcast, What NVMe™/TCP Means for Networked Storage? where Sagi Grimberg, lead author of the NVMe/TCP specification, and J Metz, Board Member for SNIA, explained what NVMe/TCP is all about. If you haven’t seen the webcast yet, check it out on-demand.

Like any new technology, there’s no shortage of areas for potential confusion or questions. In this FAQ blog, we try to clear up both.

Q. Who is responsible for updating NVMe Host Driver?

A. We assume you are referring to the Linux host driver (independent OS software vendors are responsible for developing their own drivers). Like any device driver and/or subsystem in Linux, the responsibility of maintenance is on the maintainer(s) listed under the MAINTAINERS file. The responsibility of contributing is shared by all the community members.

Q. What is the realistic timeframe to see a commercially available NVME over TCP driver for targets? Is one year from now (2020) fair?

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