Category: Storage Management

Scaling Management of Storage and Fabrics

Richelle Ahlvers
Composable disaggregated infrastructures (CDI) provide a promising solution to address the provisioning and computational efficiency limitations, as well as hardware and operating costs, of integrated, siloed, systems. But how do we solve these problems in an open, standards-based way? DMTF, SNIA, the OFA, and the CXL Consortium are working together to provide elements of the overall solution, with Redfish® and SNIA Swordfish™ manageability providing the standards-based interface. The OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) is developing an OpenFabrics Management Framework (OFMF) designed for configuring fabric interconnects and managing composable disaggregated resources in dynamic HPC infrastructures using client-friendly abstractions. Want to learn more? Read More

Using SNIA Swordfish™ to Manage Storage on Your Network

Barry Kittner
Consider how we charge our phones: we can plug them into a computer’s USB port, into a wall outlet using a power adapter, or into an external/portable power bank. We can even place them on top of a Qi-enabled pad for wireless charging. None of these options are complicated, but we routinely charge our phones throughout the day and, thanks to USB and standardized charging interfaces, our decision boils down to what is available and convenient. Now consider how a storage administrator chooses to add storage capacity to a datacenter.  There are so many ways to do it:  Add one or more physical drives to a single server; add additional storage nodes to a software-defined storage cluster; add additional storage to a dedicated storage network device that provides storage to be used by other (data) servers. These options all require consideration as to the data protection methods utilized such as RAID or Erasure Coding, and the performance expectations these entail. Complicating matters further are the many different devices and standards to choose from, including traditional spinning HDDs, SSDs, Flash memory, optical drives, and Persistent Memory. Each storage instance can also be deployed as file, block, or object storage which can affect performance. Selection of the communication protocol such as iSCSI and FC/FCoE can limit scalability options. And finally, with some vendors adding the requirement of using their management paradigm to control these assets, it’s easy to see how these choices can be daunting. But… it doesn’t need to be so complicated! Read More

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

Linda Capcara
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

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

Linda Capcara
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

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

Take the Leap to SMI-S Version 1.8.0

SNIA Storage Management Blog
If you’re a storage equipment or management software vendor that uses SNIA’s Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) as the storage management interface for your solution, you’re not alone. First introduced in 2004, SMI-S has been used in over 1,350 storage products by some of the largest vendors in the industry. It defines a secure and reliable interface that can be used to discover, monitor, and control the physical and logical devices in enterprise storage area networks. Unlike proprietary management interfaces, SMI-S is a standard interface that allows management applications to reliably support a wider range of storage equipment from multiple vendors. Read More

It’s a Wrap for SNIA and the Solid State Storage Initiative at Flash Memory Summit 2019

Marty Foltyn
A Best of Show award, over 12 hours of content, three days of demos, and a new program drawing attention to persistent memory programming completed, Flash Memory Summit 2019 is officially a success! SNIA volunteers were again recognized for their hard work developing standards for datacenters and storage professionals with a “Most Innovative Flash Memory Technology” FMS Best of Show award. This year, it was SNIA’s Object Drive Technical Work Group who received kudos for the SNIA Technical Position Key Value Storage API Specification.  Jay Kramer, head of the FMS awards program, presented the award to Bill Martin, Chair of the Object Drive TWG, commenting “Key value store technology can enable NVM storage devices to map and store data more efficiently and with enhanced performance, which is of paramount significance to facilitate computational storage.  Flash Memory Summit is proud to recognize the SNIA Object Drive Technical Work Group (TWG) for creating the SNIA Technical Position Key Value Storage API Specification Version 1.0 defining an application programming interface (API) for key value storage devices and making this available to the public for download. SNIA Sessions at FMS Now Available for Viewing and Download Read More

It’s a Wrap for SNIA and the Solid State Storage Initiative at Flash Memory Summit 2019

Marty Foltyn

A Best of Show award, over 12 hours of content, three days of demos, and a new program drawing attention to persistent memory programming completed – Flash Memory Summit 2019 is officially a success!

SNIA volunteers were again recognized for their hard work developing standards for datacenters and storage professionals with a “Most Innovative Flash Memory Technology” FMS Best of Show award. This year, it was SNIA’s Object Drive Technical Work Group who received kudos for the SNIA Technical Position Key Value Storage API Specification.  Jay Kramer, head of the FMS awards program, presented the award to Bill Martin, Chair of the Object Drive TWG, commenting “Key value store technology can enable NVM storage devices to map and store data more efficiently and with enhanced performance, which is of paramount significance to facilitate computational storage.  Flash Memory Summit is proud to recognize the SNIA Object Drive Technical Work Group (TWG) for creating the SNIA Technical Position Key Value Storage API Specification Version 1.0 defining an application programming interface (API) for key value storage devices and making this available to the public for download.

SNIA Sessions at FMS Now Available for Viewing and Download

SNIA Executive Director Michael Oros again took the mainstage to describe “Standards that Can Change Your Job and Your Life” encapsulating SNIA work in three core areas:  persistent memory, computational storage, and storage management.

Also at Flash Memory Summit, SNIA work and volunteers were on display in eight sessions on persistent memory, highlighting advances in persistent memory, PM software and applications, remote persistent memory, and current research in PM, sponsored by SNIA, JEDEC, and the OpenFabrics Alliance.   A new 2019 SNIA-sponsored track on computational storage featured four sessions on controllers and technology, deploying solutions, implementation methods, and applications.

SNIA’s SFF Technology Affiliate highlighted their work on the Enterprise and Datacenter 1U Short SSD Form Factor (E1.S) specification SFF-TA 1006,  while the Object Drive TWG expanded on their work in standardization for a key value storage interface underway at SNIA and NVM Express.   SNIA also presented a preconference seminar tutorial on persistent memory and NVDIMM, and a session on Storage Management with Swordfish APIs for Open Channel SSDs.

A new session on programming to persistent memory featured a tutorial (video available soon) and a 2 ½ day Persistent Memory Programming Hackathon where attendees programmed to persistent memory systems and discussed their applications.  Next up for the Hackathon series – a 2-day event at SNIA Storage Developer Conference.

Find PDFs of these sessions by clicking on Flash Memory Summit 2019 under Associated Event in the SNIA Educational Library.

We continued our discussions on the exhibit floor featuring JEDEC-compliant NVDIMM-Ns from SNIA Persistent Memory and NVDIMM SIG members AgigA Tech, Micron, SMART Modular Technologies, and Viking in a Supermicro box running an open source performance demonstration.  If you missed it, the SIG will showcase a similar demonstration at the upcoming SNIA Storage Developer Conference September 23-26, 2019, and at the 2020 SNIA Persistent Memory Summit January 23, 2020, both at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara.  Click on the conference names to register for both events.

Storage Management – Standards Matter

SNIA Storage Management Blog

By Don Deel, Senior Standards Technologist, NetApp; SNIA SMI Governing Board Chair, SMI Technical Development Committee Chair

By 2025, IDC says worldwide data will grow 61% to 175 zettabytes, with as much of the data residing in the cloud as in data centers. A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes. Now multiply that 175 times. It’s mind boggling. And with the explosion in data, IDC states that businesses are looking to centralize data management and delivery, as well as to leverage data to control their businesses and the user experience. The Storage Management Initiative (SMI) is a SNIA group that helps unify the storage industry to develop and standardize interoperable storage management technologies for today’s IT environments and next generation data centers. It supports the development of storage management solutions based upon standard interfaces instead of proprietary interfaces.  Standard storage interfaces lower costs, make integration efforts easier and provide increased reliability, security and manageability. Read More

Join the Conversation at the Open Infrastructure Summit

Kristen Hauser

Thousands of IT decision makers, operators and the developers will gather April 29 – May 1 at the Open Infrastructure Summit in Denver, Colorado to collaborate across common use cases and solve real problems.

On Monday, April 29, from 2:50 p.m. – 3:30 p.m., members of the OpenSDS project and the Technical Working Group (TWG) which develops SNIA Swordfish™, are holding a Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) session at the summit titled “Open Storage Management.”

To kick things off, Richelle Ahlvers, SNIA board member, chair of the Scalable Storage Management TWG, and storage management architect, Broadcom, will provide a brief overview of the SNIA Swordfish storage management specification. Swordfish is an extension to the DMTF Redfish® specification that provides a unified approach for the management of storage equipment and services in converged, hyper-converged, hyperscale and cloud infrastructure environments.  Swordfish is built using a RESTful interface over HTTPS in JSON format, and also provides support for OpenAPI.

Richelle will also discuss the lifecycle of creating consistent open standard interfaces, from definition to implementations, and how the open source ecosystem plays a role in open infrastructure management.

Xing Yang, principal architect at Huawei Technologies, and project and architecture lead in OpenSDS, will explain how the open source community addresses storage integration challenges in scale-out cloud native environments and connects siloed data solutions.

The session will be interactive and attendees will be encouraged to join in the conversation, get their questions answered and share their knowledge while making valuable new connections. Add the BoF to your conference schedule here.

While visiting the summit, stop by to see SNIA in booth #B13 in the Open Infrastructure Marketplace and pick up the latest Swordfish swag!