Beyond NVMe-oF Performance Hero Numbers

Erik Smith
When it comes to selecting the right NVMe over Fabrics™ (NVMe-oF™) solution, one should look beyond test results that demonstrate NVMe-oF’s dramatic reduction in latency and consider the other, more important, questions such as “How does the transport really impact application performance?” and “How does the transport holistically fit into my environment?” To date, the focus has been on specialized fabrics like RDMA (e.g., RoCE) because it provides the lowest possible latency, as well as Fibre Channel because it is generally considered to be the most reliable. However, with the introduction of NVMe-oF/TCP this conversation must be expanded to also include considerations regarding scale, cost, and operations. That’s why the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) is hosting a webcast series that will dive into answering these questions beyond the standard answer “it depends.” 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

How COVID has Changed Data Privacy and Data Protection

Alex McDonald
The COVID-19 Pandemic has amplified cybersecurity concerns particularly related to the cloud. Threat actors have recognized a unique opportunity to exploit pandemic-related vulnerabilities through social engineering attacks, business email compromise, work from home and other remote weak points. This results in increased risk and occurrence of ransomware attacks and data breaches that can disrupt or totally compromise organizations’ ability to conduct business. These security incidents can also subject victims to liability for violations of privacy and data breach notification laws. The SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) will be taking on this important topic with a live webcast on January 20, 2021, “Data Privacy and Data Protection in the COVID Era” where our SNIA experts will discuss: Read More

Data Deduplication FAQ

Alex McDonald
The SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) recently took on the topics surrounding data reduction with a 3-part webcast series that covered Data Reduction Basics, Data Compression and Data Deduplication. If you missed any of them, they are all available on-demand. In Not Again! Data Deduplication for Storage Systems” our SNIA experts discussed how to reduce the number of copies of data that get stored, mirrored, or backed up. Attendees asked some interesting questions during the live event and here are answers to them all. Q. Why do we use the term rehydration for deduplication?  I believe the use of the term rehydration when associated with deduplication is misleading. Rehydration is the activity of bringing something back to its original content/size as in compression. With deduplication the action is more aligned with a scatter/gather I/O profile and this does not require rehydration. Read More

Reflections on Computational Storage

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As a year we will never forget drew to a close, SNIA on Storage sat down (virtually of course!) with Computational Storage Technical Work Group Co-Chairs Jason Molgaard of Arm and Scott Shadley of NGD Systems and Computational Storage Special Interest Group Chair Eli Tiomkin of NGD Systems to take the pulse of 2020 and anticipate 2021 computational storage advances.

SNIA On Storage (SOS): Jason, Scott, and Eli, thanks for taking the time to chat. Where was computational storage 12 months ago and how did it progress in 2020?

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Video Analytics Q&A

Jim Fister
There is a new wave of cognitive services based on video and image analytics, leveraging the latest in machine learning and deep learning. In a recent SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) webcast “How Video Analytics is Changing the Way We Store Video,” we looked at some of the benefits and factors driving this adoption, as well as explored compelling projects and required components for a successful video-based cognitive service. This included some great work being done in the open source community. In the course of the presentation, there were several discussion points and questions that arose. Our SNIA presenters, Glyn Bowden from HPE and Kevin Cone from Intel provide the answers. Read More

Questions on Securing Data in Transit Answered

Alex McDonald
Data in transit provides a large attack surface for bad actors. Keeping data secure from threats and compromise while it’s being transmitted was the topic at our live SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) webcast, Securing Data in Transit. Our presenters, Claudio DeSanti, Ariel Kit, Cesar Obediente, and Brandon Hoff did an excellent job explaining how to mitigate risks. We had several questions during the live event. Our panel of speakers have been kind enough to answer them here. Q. Could we control the most important point – identity, that is, the permission of every data transportation must have an identity label, so that we can control anomalies and misbehaviors easily? Read More

Compute Everywhere – Your Questions Answered

Jim Fister
Recently, the SNIA Compute, Memory, and Storage Initiative (CMSI) hosted a wide-ranging discussion on the “compute everywhere” continuum.  The panel featured Chipalo Street from Microsoft, Steve Adams from Intel, and Eli Tiomkin from NGD Systems representing both the start-up environment and the SNIA Computational Storage Special Interest Group. We appreciate the many questions asked during the webcast and are pleased to answer them in this Q&A blog. Read More

Implications of Internet of Payments Q&A

Jim Fister
Internet of Payments (IoP) enables payment processing over many kinds of IoT devices and has also led to the emergence of the micro-transaction. It’s an area of rapid growth. Recently, the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) hosted a live webcast Technology Implications of Internet of Payments. The talk was hosted by me, with Glyn Bowden from HPE and Richard George from HLPS providing expert insight. In the course of the conversation, several comments and questions arose, and they are summarized here. Feel free to view the entire discussion and provide us with feedback on the talk. We are also always interested on topics you’d like to see us cover in the future. Q. When considering digitization of assets, currency is not locked to a solid standard. That is, they are not based on specific physical assets. Many new digital currencies are therefore unstable. But the proposition here is that they would be more secure because they’re locked to real physical value. Is that correct? Read More