How SNIA Swordfish™ Expanded with NVMe® and NVMe-oF™

The SNIA Swordfish™ specification and ecosystem are growing in scope to include full enablement and alignment for NVMe® and NVMe-oF client workloads and use cases. By partnering with other industry-standard organizations including DMTF®, NVM Express, and OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA), SNIA’s Scalable Storage Management Technical Work Group has updated the Swordfish bundles from version 1.2.1 and later to cover an expanding range of NVMe and NVMe-oF functionality including NVMe device management and storage fabric technology management and administration. The Need Large-scale computing designs are increasingly multi-node and linked together through high-speed networks. These networks may be comprised of different types of technologies, fungible, and morphing. Over time, many different types of high-performance networking devices will evolve to participate in these modern, coupled-computing platforms. New fabric management capabilities, orchestration, and automation will be required to deploy, secure, and optimally maintain these high-speed networks. Read More

Q&A on Data Movement and Computational Storage

Recently, the SNIA Compute, Memory, and Storage Initiative hosted a live webcast “Data Movement and Computational Storage”, moderated by Jim Fister of The Decision Place with Nidish Kamath of KIOXIA, David McIntyre of Samsung, and Eli Tiomkin of NGD Systems as panelists. We had a great discussion on new ways to look at storage, flexible computer systems, and how to put on your security hat. During our conversation, we answered audience questions, and raised a few of our own!  Check out some of the back-and-forth, and tune in to the entire video for customer use cases and thoughts for the future. Read More

Continuing to Refine and Define Computational Storage

The SNIA Computational Storage Technical Work Group (TWG) has been hard at work on the SNIA Technical Document Computational Storage Architecture and Programming Model.  SNIAOnStorage recently sat down via zoom with the document editor Bill Martin of Samsung and TWG Co-Chairs Jason Molgaard of Arm and Scott Shadley of NGD Systems to understand the work included in the model and why definitions of computational storage are so important. SNIAOnStorage (SOS): Shall we start with the fundamentals?  Just what is the Computational Storage Architecture and Programming Model? Scott Shadley (SS): The SNIA Computational Storage Architecture and Programming Model (Model) introduces the framework of how to use a new tool to architect your infrastructure by deploying compute resources in the storage layer. Bill Martin (BM): The Model enables architecture and programming of computational storage devices. These kinds of devices include those with storage physically attached, and also those with storage not physically attached but considered computational because the devices are associated with storage. SOS: How did the TWG approach creating the Model and what does it cover? Read More

SMI-S Storage Management Quick Start Guide Series Kicks-Off

Twenty-year SNIA veteran Mike Walker has created a series of videos titled “SMI-S Quick Start Guides” that provides developers using the SMI-S storage management specification instructions on how to find useful information in a SMI-S server using the python-based PyWBEM open source tool. “Using the PyWBEM tool, I created a set of mock SMI-S 1.8 servers which I have shared with the world on GitHub,” said Walker. “I also created a set of PDFs called ‘Quick Start Guides’ and a series of videos demonstrating some of the most recent capabilities of the SMI-S 1.8 specification. Storage equipment vendors and management software vendors seeking to address the day-to-day tasks of the IT environment can use this information to work with SMI-S 1.8.” Read More

Cutting Edge Persistent Memory Education – Hear from the Experts!

Most of the US is currently experiencing an epic winter.  So much for 2021 being less interesting than 2020.  Meanwhile, large portions of the world are also still locked down waiting for vaccine production. So much for 2020 ending in 2020.  What, oh what, can possibly take our minds off the boredom? Here’s an idea – what about some education in persistent memory programming?  Read More

Answering Your Questions on EDSFF

We had a tremendous response to our webcast asking if we were truly at the end of the 2.5-inch disk era. SNIA Compute, Memory, and Storage Initiative SSD Special Interest Group brought together experts from Dell, Facebook, HPE, JEDEC, KIOXIA, Lenovo, and Microsoft in a lively follow on to the Enterprise and Data Center SSD Form Factor (EDSFF) May 2020 discussions at OCP Summit,. If you missed our live webcast – watch it on demand. Webcast attendees raised a variety of questions.  Our experts provide answers to them here: Q:  SFF_TA_1006 suggests E1.S can support max 25W for 25mm asymmetric heat-sink. What are the air-flow assumptions for this estimate? Are there any thermal models and test guidelines available for EDSFF form-factors? Read More

See You (Online) at SDC!

We’re going virtual in 2020, and Compute, Memory, and Storage are important topics at the upcoming SNIA Storage Developer ConferenceSNIA CMSI is a sponsor of SDC 2020 – so visit our booth for the latest information and a chance to chat with our experts.  With over 120 sessions available to watch live during the event and later on-demand, live Birds of a Feather chats, and a Persistent Memory Bootcamp accessing new PM systems in the cloud, we want to make sure you don’t miss anything!  Register here to see sessions live – or on demand to your schedule.  Agenda highlights include: Computational Storage Talks Deploying Computational Storage at the Edge – discussing the deployment of small form factor, asic-based, solutions, including a use case. Next Generation Datacenters require composable architecture enablers and deterministic programmable intelligenceexplaining why determinism, parallel programming and ease of programming are important. Computational Storage Birds of a Feather LIVE Session – ask your questions of our experts and see live demos of computational storage production systems. Tuesday September 22, 2020 – 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm PDT (UTC-7) Persistent Memory Presentations Read More

Take 10 – Watch a Computational Storage Trilogy

We’re all busy these days, and the thought of scheduling even more content to watch can be overwhelming.  Great technical content – especially from the SNIA Educational Library – delivers what you need to know, but often it needs to be consumed in long chunks. Perhaps it’s time to shorten the content so you have more freedom to watch.

With the tremendous interest in computational storage, SNIA is on the forefront of standards development – and education.  The SNIA Computational Storage Special Interest Group (CS SIG) has just produced a video trilogy – informative, packed with detail, and consumable in under 10 minutes!

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Are We at the End of the 2.5-inch Disk Era?

The SNIA Solid State Storage Special Interest Group (SIG) recently updated the Solid State Drive Form Factor page to provide detailed information on dimensions; mechanical, electrical, and connector specifications; and protocols. On our August 4, 2020 SNIA webcast, we will take a detailed look at one of these form factors – Enterprise and Data Center SSD Form Factor (EDSFF) – challenging an expert panel to consider if we are at the end of the 2.5-in disk era. Enterprise and Data Center Form Factor (EFSFF) is designed natively for data center NVMe SSDs to improve thermal, power, performance, and capacity scaling. EDSFF has different variants for flexible and scalable performance, dense storage configurations, general purpose servers, and improved data center TCO.  At the 2020 Open Compute Virtual Summit, OEMs, cloud service providers, hyperscale data center, and SSD vendors showcased products and their vision for how this new family of SSD form factors solves real data challenges. Read More