Category: Networked Storage

NVMe Key-Value Standard Q&A

John Kim
Last month, Bill Martin, SNIA Technical Council Co-Chair, presented a detailed update on what’s happening in the development and deployment of the NVMe Key-Value standard. Bill explained where Key Value fits within an architecture, why it’s important, and the standards work that is being done between NVM Express and SNIA. The webcast was one of our highest rated. If you missed it, it’s available on-demand along with the webcast slides. Attendees at the live event had many great questions, which Bill Martin has answered here: Q. Two of the most common KV storage mechanisms in use today are AWS S3 and RocksDB. How does NVMe KV standards align or differ from them? How difficult would it be to map between the APIs and semantics of those other technologies to NVMe KV devices? A. KV Storage is intended as a storage layer that would support these and other object storage mechanisms. There is a publicly available KVRocks: RocksDB compatible key value store and MyRocks compatible storage engine designed for KV SSDs at GitHub. There is also a Ceph Object storage design available. These are example implementations that can help an implementer get to an efficient use of NVMe KV storage. Q. At which layer will my app stack need to change to take advantage of KV storage?  Will VMware or Linux or Windows need to change at the driver level?  Or do the apps need to be changed to treat data differently?  If the apps don’t need to change doesn’t this then just take the data layout tables and move them up the stack in to the server? Read More

Data Compression Q&A

Ilker Cebeli
Everyone is looking to squeeze more efficiency from storage. That’s why the SNIA Networking Storage Forum hosted a live webcast last month “Compression: Putting the Squeeze on Storage.” The audience asked many great questions on compression techniques. Here are answers from our expert presenters, John Kim and Brian Will: Q. When multiple unrelated entities are likely to compress the data, how do they understand that the data is already compressed and so skip the compression? A. Often they can tell from the file extension or header that the file has already been compressed. Otherwise each entity that wants to compress the data will try to compress it and then discard the results if it makes the file larger (because it was already compressed). Read More

How Can You Keep Data in Transit Secure?

AlexMcDonald
It’s well known that data is often considered less secure while in motion, particularly across public networks, and attackers are finding increasingly innovative ways to snoop on and compromise data in flight. But risks can be mitigated with foresight and planning. So how do you adequately protect data in transit? It’s the next topic the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) will tackle as part of our Storage Networking Security Webcast Series.  Join us October 28, 2020 for our live webcast Securing Data in Transit. In this webcast, we’ll cover what the threats are to your data as it’s transmitted, how attackers can interfere with data along its journey, and methods of putting effective protection measures in place for data in transit. 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

Notable Questions on NVMe-oF 1.1

Tim Lustig
At our recent SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) webcast, “Notable Updates in NVMe-oF™ 1.1” we explored the latest features of NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF), discussing what’s new in the NVMe-oF 1.1 release, support for CMB and PMR, managing and provisioning NVMe-oF devices with SNIA Swordfish™, and FC-NVMe-2. If you missed the live event, you can watch it here. Our presenters received many interesting questions on NVMe-oF and here are answers to them all: Read More

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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Encryption Q&A

AlexMcDonald

Ever wonder how encryption actually works? Experts, Ed Pullin and Judy Furlong, provided an encryption primer to hundreds of attendees at our SNIA NSF webcast Storage Networking Security: Encryption 101. If you missed it, It’s now available on-demand. We promised during the live event to post answers to the questions we received. Here they are:

Q. When using asymmetric keys, how often do the keys need to be changed?

A. How often asymmetric (and symmetric) keys need to be changed is driven by the purpose the keys are used for, the security policies of the organization/environment in which they are used and the length of the key material. For example, the CA/Browser Forum has a policy that certificates used for TLS (secure communications) have a validity of no more than two years.

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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.

Wish You Knew More About Storage? Geek Out with SNIA

Diane Marsili Leave a comment

Are you a storage geek at heart? Or perhaps an aspiring one? Here’s your chance to “Geek Out” on all the storage basics. Whether you need a refresh on a foundational storage technology or want a 101 lesson on something new, SNIA has you covered.

Visit our “Geek Out on Storage” page for a unique lesson on storage basics. We call it “Everything You Wanted to Know About Storage But Were Too Proud to Ask.” Here you’ll find videos that clearly define and explain storage terminology and technologies.

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