A Q&A on Data Literacy

Jim Fister
The SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) recently hosted a conversation with Glyn Bowden from HPE that I moderated on “Using Data Literacy to Drive Insight.”  In a wide-ranging conversation just over 45 minutes, we had a great discussion on a variety of topics related to ensuring the accuracy of data in order to draw the right conclusions using current examples of data from the COVID-19 pandemic as well as law enforcement. In the process of the dialog, some questions and comments arose, and we’re collecting them in this blog. Q. So who really needs Data Literacy skills? A: Really, everyone does.  We all make decisions in our daily life, and it helps to understand the provenance of the information being presented.  It’s also important to find ways to the source material for the data when necessary in order to make the best decisions. Everyone can benefit from knowing more about data.  We all need to interpret the information offered to us by people, press, journals, educators, colleagues, friends. Q. What’s an example of “everyone” who needs data literacy? Read More

An FAQ on Data Reduction Fundamentals

John Kim
There’s a fair amount of confusion when it comes to data reduction terminology and techniques. That’s why the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) hosted a live webcast, “Everything You Wanted to Know About Storage But Were Too Proud to Ask: Data Reduction.”  It was a 101-level lesson on the fundamentals of data reduction, which can be performed in different places and at different stages of the data lifecycle. The goal was to clear up confusion around different data reduction and data compression techniques and set the stage for deeper dive webcasts on this topic (see the end of this blog for info on those). As promised during the webcast, here are answers to the questions we didn’t have time to address during the live event. Q. Does block level compression have any direct advantage over file level compression? 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

Keeping Up with 5G, IoT and Edge Computing

Michael Hoard
The broad adoption of 5G, Internet of things (IoT) and edge computing will reshape the nature and role of enterprise and cloud storage over the next several years. What building blocks, capabilities and integration methods are needed to make this happen? That will be the topic of discussion at our live SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies webcast on October 21, 2020 “Storage Implications at the Velocity of 5G Streaming.” Join my SNIA expert colleagues, Steve Adams and Chip Maurer, for a discussion on common questions surrounding this topic, including:  Read More

An FAQ on the “Fine Print” of Cyber Insurance

Paul Talbut
Last month, the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative, convened experts, Eric Hibbard and Casey Boggs, for a webcast on cyber insurance – a growing area to further mitigate risks from cyber attacks. However, as our attendees learned, cyber insurance is not as simple as buying a pre-packaged policy. If you missed the live event “Does Your Cyber Insurance Strategy Need a Tune-Up” you can watch it on-demand. Determining where and how cyber insurance fits in a risk management program generates a lot of questions. Our experts have provided answer sto them all here: Q. Do “mega” companies buy cyber insurance or do they self-insure? A. Many Fortune 500 companies do carry cyber insurance. The scope of coverage can vary significantly. Concerns over ransomware are often a driver. Publicly traded companies have a need to meet due care obligations and cyber insurance is a way of demonstrating this. Q. Insurance companies don’t like to pay out. I suspect making a claim is quite contentious? Read More

Composable or Computational – Your Questions Answered!

Eli Tiomkin
Our recent webcast on Composable Infrastructure and Computational Storage raised some interesting questions. No need to compose your own answers – my co-presenter Philip Kufeldt and I answer them here! You can find the entire webcast video along with the slide PDF in the SNIA Educational Library. We also invite you and your colleagues to take 10 and watch three short videos on Computational Storage topics. Q (I’m) a little confused about moving data across, for example, NVMe-oF, as it consumes DDR bandwidth. Can you elaborate? Read More

Security & Privacy Regulations: An Expert Q&A

J Metz
Last month the SNIA Networking Storage Forum continued its Storage Networking Security Webcast series with a presentation on Security & Privacy Regulations. We were fortunate to have security experts, Thomas Rivera and Eric Hibbard, explain the current state of regulations related to data protection and data privacy. If you missed it, it’s available on-demand. Q. Do you see the US working towards a national policy around privacy or is it going to stay state-specified? A.  This probably will not happen anytime soon due to political reasons. Having a national policy on privacy is not necessarily a good thing, depending on your state. Such a policy would likely have a preemption clause and could be used to diminish requirements from states like CA and MA. Read More

Non-Cryptic Answers to Common Cryptography Questions

AlexMcDonald
The SNIA Networking Storage Forum’s Storage Networking Security Webcast Series continues to examine the many different aspects of storage security. At our most recent webcast on applied cryptography, our experts dove into user authentication, data encryption, hashing, blockchain and more. If you missed the live event, you can watch it on-demand. Attendees of the live event had some very interesting questions on this topic and here are answer to them all: Q. Can hashes be used for storage deduplication?  If so, do the hashes need to be 100% collision-proof to be used for deduplication? A. Yes, hashes are often used for storage deduplication. It’s preferred that they be collision-proof but it’s not required if the deduplication software does a bit-by-bit comparison of any files that produce the same hash in order to verify if they really are identical or not. If the hash is 100% collision-proof then there is no need to run bit-by-bit comparisons of files that produce the same hash value. Q. Do cloud or backup service vendors use blockchain proof of space to prove to customers how much storage space is available or has been reserved?    Read More

See You (Online) at SDC!

Marty Foltyn
We’re going virtual in 2020, and Compute, Memory, and Storage are important topics at the upcoming SNIA Storage Developer Conference.  SNIA 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 intelligence – explaining 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

AIOps Q&A

J Metz
Last month, the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative was fortunate to have artificial intelligence (AI) expert, Parviz Peiravi, explore the topic of AI Operations (AIOps) at our live webcast, “IT Modernization with AIOps: The Journey.” Parviz explained why the journey to cloud native and microservices, and the complexity that comes along with that, requires a rethinking of enterprise architecture. If you missed the live presentation, it’s now available on demand together with the webcast slides. We had some interesting questions from our live audience. As promised, here are answers to them all: Q. Can you please define the Data Lake and how different it is from other data storage models?           Read More