Author: Tom Friend

Processing and Managing Edge Data Q&A

Tom Friend
The SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) kicked off our “Storage Life on the Edge” webcast series with a session on managing data from the edge to the cloud and back. We were fortunate to have a panel of experts, Dan Cummins, John Kim and David McIntyre to explain key considerations when managing and processing data generated at the edge. If you missed this introductory session, it’s available on-demand, along with the presentation slides at the SNIA Educational Library. Our presenters spent a good percentage of time answering questions from our live audience. Here are answers to them all. Q. Could an application be deployed simultaneously at near-edge, far edge and functional edge? Read More

Storage for Automotive Q&A

Tom Friend
At our recent SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) webcast “Revving up Storage for Automotive” our expert presenters, Ryan Suzuki and John Kim, discussed storage implications as vehicles are turning into data centers on wheels. If you missed the live event, it is available on-demand together with the presentations slides. Our audience asked several interesting questions on this quickly evolving industry. Here are John and Ryan’s answers to them. Q: What do you think the current storage landscape is missing to support the future of IoV [Internet of Vehicles]? Are there any identified cases of missing features from storage (edge/cloud) which are preventing certain ideas from being implemented and deployed? Read More

Storage Life on the Edge

Tom Friend
Cloud to Edge infrastructures are rapidly growing.  It is expected that by 2025, up to 75% of all data generated will be created at the Edge.  However, Edge is a tricky word and you’ll get a different definition depending on who you ask. The physical edge could be in a factory, retail store, hospital, car, plane, cell tower level, or on your mobile device. The network edge could be a top-of-rack switch, server running host-based networking, or 5G base station. The Edge means putting servers, storage, and other devices outside the core data center and closer to both the data sources and the users of that data—both edge sources and edge users could be people or machines. Read More

A Q&A on Discovery Automation for NVMe-oF IP-Based SANs

Tom Friend
In order to fully unlock the potential of the NVMe® IP based SANs, we first need to address the manual and error prone process that is currently used to establish connectivity between NVMe Hosts and NVM subsystems. Several leading companies in the industry have joined together through NVM Express to collaborate on innovations to simplify and automate this discovery process. This was the topic of discussion at our recent SNIA Networking Storage Forum webcast “NVMe-oF: Discovery Automation for IP-based SANs” where our experts, Erik Smith and Curtis Ballard, took a deep dive on the work that is being done to address these issues. If you missed the live event, you can watch it on demand here and get a copy of the slides. Erik and Curtis did not have time to answer all the questions during the live presentation. As promised, here are answers to them all. Q. Is the Centralized Discovery Controller (CDC) highly available, and is this visible to the hosts?  Do they see a pair of CDCs on the network and retry requests to a secondary if a primary is not available? Read More

Revving Up Storage for Automotive

Tom Friend
Each year cars become smarter and more automated. In fact, the automotive industry is effectively transforming the vehicle into a data center on wheels. Connectedness, autonomous driving, and media & entertainment all bring more and more storage onboard and into networked data centers. But all the storage in (and for) a car is not created equal. There are 10s if not 100s of different processors on a car today. Some are attached to storage, some are not and each application demands different characteristics from the storage device. The SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) is exploring this fascinating topic on December 7, 2021 at our live webcast “Revving Up Storage for Automotive” where industry experts from both the storage and automotive worlds will discuss: Read More

Storage for AI Q&A

Tom Friend
What types of storage are needed for different aspects of AI? That was one of the many topics covered in our SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) webcast “Storage for AI Applications.” It was a fascinating discussion and I encourage you to check it out on-demand. Our panel of experts answered many questions during the live roundtable Q&A. Here are answers to those questions, as well as the ones we didn’t have time to address. Q. What are the different data set sizes and workloads in AI/ML in terms of data set size, sequential/ random, write/read mix? A. Data sets will vary incredibly from use case to use case. They may be GBs to possibly 100s of PB. In general, the workloads are very heavily reads maybe 95%+. While it would be better to have sequential reads, in general the patterns tend to be closer to random. In addition, different use cases will have very different data sizes. Some may be GBs large, while others may be <1 KB. The different sizes have a direct impact on performance in storage and may change how you decide to store the data. Read More

Does this Look Outdated to You?

Tom Friend
Last month, the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) took a different perspective on the storage networking technologies we cover by discussing technologies and practices that you may want to reconsider. The webcast was called “Storage Technologies & Practices Ripe for Refresh.”  I encourage you to watch it on-demand.  It was an interesting session where my colleagues Eric Hibbard, John Kim, and Alex McDonald explored security problems, aging network protocols, and NAS protocols. It was quite popular. In fact, we’re planning more in this series, so stay tuned. The audience asked us some great questions during the live event and as promised, here are our answers: Q. How can I tell if my SSH connections are secure? A. Short of doing a security scan of a server’s SSH port (typically TCP/IP port 22) it can be difficult to know if your connection is secure. In general, the following are recommended: Read More

Is the Sun Setting on Some of Your Technologies?

Tom Friend
So much of what we discuss within SNIA is the latest emerging technologies in storage. While it’s good to know about what technology is coming, it’s also important to understand the technologies that should be sunsetted. It’s the topic of our next SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) webcast on February 3, 2021, “Storage Technologies & Practices Ripe for Refresh.”  In this webcast, you’ll learn about storage technologies and practices in your data center that are ready for refresh or possibly retirement. Find out why some long-standing technologies and practices should be re-evaluated. We’ll discuss: Read More

Optimizing NVMe over Fabrics Performance Q&A

Tom Friend
Almost 800 people have already watched our webcast “Optimizing NVMe over Fabrics Performance with Different Ethernet Transports: Host Factors” where SNIA experts covered the factors impacting different Ethernet transport performance for NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) and provided data comparisons of NVMe over Fabrics tests with iWARP, RoCEv2 and TCP. If you missed the live event, watch it on-demand at your convenience. The session generated a lot of questions, all answered here in this blog. In fact, many of the questions have prompted us to continue this discussion with future webcasts on NVMe-oF performance. Please follow us on Twitter @SNIANSF for upcoming dates. Q. What factors will affect the performance of NVMe over RoCEv2 and TCP when the network between host and target is longer than typical Data Center environment? i.e., RTT > 100ms Read More

Optimizing NVMe over Fabrics Performance with Different Ethernet Transports: Host Factors

Tom Friend
NVMe over Fabrics technology is gaining momentum and getting more traction in data centers, but there are three kinds of Ethernet based NVMe over Fabrics transports: iWARP, RoCEv2 and TCP. How do we optimize NVMe over Fabrics performance with different Ethernet transports? That will be the discussion topic at our SNIA Networking Storage Forum Webcast, “Optimizing NVMe over Fabrics Performance with Different Ethernet Transports: Host Factors” on September 16, 2020. Setting aside the considerations of network infrastructure, scalability, security requirements and complete solution stack, this webcast will explore the performance of different Ethernet-based transports for NVMe over Fabrics at the detailed benchmark level. We will show three key performance indicators: IOPs, Throughput, and Latency with different workloads including: Read More