Category: Cloud Storage

What the “T” Means in SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies

Alex McDonald
The SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) has had a rebrand; we’ve added a T for Technologies into our name, and we’re now officially the Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI). That doesn’t seem like a significant change, but there’s a good reason. Our old name reflected the push to getting acceptance of cloud storage, and that specific cloud storage debate has been won, and big time. One relatively small cloud service provider is currently storing 400PB of clients’ data. Twitter alone consumes 300PB of data on Google’s cloud offering. Facebook, Amazon, AliBaba, Tencent – all have huge data storage numbers. Enterprises of every size are storing data in the cloud. That’s why we added the word “technologies.” The expanded charter and new name reflect the need to support the evolving cloud business models and architectures such as OpenStack, software defined storage, Kubernetes and object storage. Read More

Simplifying the Movement of Data from Cloud to Cloud

Alex McDonald
We are increasingly living in a multi-cloud world, with potentially multiple private, public and hybrid cloud implementations supporting a single enterprise. Organizations want to leverage the agility of public cloud resources to run existing workloads without having to re-plumb or re-architect them and their processes. In many cases, applications and data have been moved individually to the public cloud. Over time, some applications and data might need to be moved back on premises, or moved partially or entirely, from one cloud to another. That means simplifying the movement of data from cloud to cloud. Data movement and data liberation – the seamless transfer of data from one cloud to another – has become a major requirement. Read More

Evaluator Group to Share Hybrid Cloud Research

Alex McDonald

In a recent survey of enterprise hybrid cloud users, the Evaluator Group saw that nearly 60% of respondents indicated that lack of interoperability is a significant technology issue that they must overcome in order to move forward. In fact, lack of interoperability was the number one issue, surpassing public cloud security and network security as significant inhibitors.

The SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) is pleased to have John Webster, Senior Partner at Evaluator Group, who will join us on December 12th for a live webcast to dive into the findings of their research. In this webcast, Multi-Cloud Storage: Addressing the Need for Portability and Interoperability, my SNIA Cloud colleague, Mark Carlson, and John will discuss enterprise hybrid cloud objectives and barriers to adoption. John and Mark will focus on cloud interoperability within the storage domain and the CSI’s work that promotes interoperability and portability of data stored in the cloud.

As moderator of this webcast, I’ll make sure we offer great insights on real-world cloud deployment challenges. As always, we will be available to answer your questions on the spot. I encourage you to register today. We hope to see you on the 12th.

 

Expert Answers to Cloud Object Storage and Gateways Questions

Alex McDonald
In our most recent SNIA Cloud webcast, “Cloud Object Storage and the Use of Gateways,” we discussed market trends toward the adoption of object storage and the use of gateways to execute on a cloud strategy.  If you missed the live event, it’s now available on-demand together with the webcast slides. There were many good questions at the live event and our expert, Dan Albright, has graciously answered them in this blog. Read More

How Gateways Benefit Cloud Object Storage

Alex McDonald
The use of cloud object storage is ramping up sharply especially in the public cloud, where its simplicity can significantly reduce capital budgets and operating expenses. And while it makes good economic sense, enterprises are challenged with legacy applications that do not support standard protocols to move data to and from the cloud. That’s why the SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative is hosting a live webcast on September 26th, “Cloud Object Storage and the Use of Gateways.” Read More

SNIA Activities in Security, Containers, and File Storage on Tap at Three Bay Area Events

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SNIA will be out and about in February in San Francisco and Santa Clara, CA, focused on their security, container, and file storage activities.

February 14-17 2017, join SNIA in San Francisco at the RSA Conference in the OASIS Interop: KMIP & PKCS11 booth S2115. OASIS and SNIA member companies will be demonstrating OASIS Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) through live interoperability across all participants. SNIA representatives will be on hand in the booth to answer questions about the Storage Security Industry Forum KMIP Conformance Test Program, which enables organizations with KMIP implementations to validate the protocol conformance of those products and meet market requirements for secure, plug-and-play storage solutions. And Eric Hibbard, Chair of the SNIA Security Technical Work Group and CTO Security and Privacy, HDS Corporation, will participate in the “Can I Get a Witness? Technical Witness Bootcamp” session on February 17.

The following week, February 21-23, join SNIA at Container World in Santa Clara CA. Enabling access to memory is an important concern to container designers, and Arthur Sainio, SNIA NVDIMM Special Interest Group Co-Chair from SMART Modular, will speak on Boosting Performance of Data Intensive Applications via Persistent Memory. Integrating containers into legacy solutions will be a focus of a panel where Mark Carlson, SNIA Technical Council Co-Chair from Toshiba, will speak on Container Adoption Paths into Legacy Infrastructure. SNIA experts will be joined by other leaders in the container ecosystem like Docker, Twitter, ADP, Google, and Expedia . The SNIA booth will feature cloud infrastructure and storage discussions and a demonstration of a multi-vendor persistent memory solution featuring NVDIMM!  (P.S. – Are you new to containers? Get a head start on conference discussions by checking out a December 2016 SNIA blog on Containers, Docker, and Storage.)  

Closing out February, find SNIA at their booth at USENIX FAST from February 27-March 2 in Santa Clara, CA, where you can engage with SNIA Technical Council leaders on the latest activities in file and storage technologies.

We look forward to seeing you at one (or more) of these events!

 

SNIA Storage Developer Conference-The Knowledge Continues

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SNIA’s 18th Storage Developer Conference is officially a success, with 124 general and breakout sessions;  Cloud Interoperability, Kinetiplugfest 5c 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.

20160919_120059You’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.

Containers, Docker and Storage: An Introduction

Chad Thibodeau

Containers are the latest in what are new and innovative ways of packaging, managing and deploying distributed applications. On October 6th, the SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative will host a live webcast, “Intro to Containers, Container Storage Challenges and Docker.” Together with our guest speaker from Docker, Keith Hudgins, we’ll begin by introducing the concept of containers. You’ll learn 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 deployment environments.

We’ll follow up with a look at what is required from a storage perspective, specifically when supporting stateful applications, using Docker, one of the leading software containerization platforms that provides a lightweight, open and secure environment for the deployment and management of containers. Finally, we’ll round out our Docker introduction by presenting a few key takeaways from DockerCon, the industry-leading event for makers and operators of distributed applications built on Docker, that recently took place in Seattle in June of this year.

Join us for this discussion on:

  • Application deployment history
  • Containers vs. virtual machines vs. bare metal
  • Factors driving containers and common use cases
  • Storage ecosystem and features
  • Container storage table stakes (focus on Enterprise-class storage services)
  • Introduction to Docker
  • Key takeaways from DockerCon 2016

This event is live, so we’ll be on hand to answer your questions. Please register today. We hope to see you on Oct. 6th!