Going Stir Crazy? Expand Your PM Resume at These Virtual Events!

Jim Fister

We here at SNIA know that everyone is getting a tad stir crazy sitting at home. However, there are still some great opportunities to learn while you’re trying to decide which wall of the home office to face tomorrow. SNIA Compute, Memory, and Storage Initative (CMSI) member company Intel is offering some excellent resources for those interested in programming persistent memory using the open-source Persistent Memory Development Kit (PMDK).

Intel is hosting a virtual forum on PMDK, along with the Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK), and vTune Profiler tools. This is a great opportunity to meet virtually with the teams who are developing the tools as well as the community building applications. The Virtual Forum runs June 23-35, with special focus on PMDK on June 25th. There are a variety of exciting sessions all three days.

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A Q&A on the Impact of AI

Alex McDonald

It was April Fools’ Day, but the Artificial Intelligence (AI) webcast the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) hosted on April 1st was no joke! We were fortunate to have AI experts, Glyn Bowden and James Myers, join us for an interesting discussion on the impact AI is having on data strategies. If you missed the live event, you can watch it here on-demand. The audience asked several great questions. Here are our experts’ answers:

Q. How does the performance requirement of the data change from its capture at the edge through to its use

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Your IoT Questions Answered

Alex McDonald

The SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) webcast on IoT explored how the explosion of data generated from IoT devices creates unique challenges in the way we store, transmit and curate data. If you missed the webcast, you can watch it on-demand. This topic generated several interesting questions.  As promised during the live event, here are answers to them all:

Q. Do IoT devices consume as much data as they produce?

A. It really depends on the device. There are some like sensors that will only produce data and transmit it on, on the other hand the more intelligence built into these devices the more need there might be to consume data to drive that intelligence. In the future, it’s possible there will be much more device to device (or peer to peer) traffic between IoT devices, cutting out the leg back to the data center altogether for data that doesn’t need to be there.

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The Latest on NVMe-oF 1.1

Tim Lustig
Since its introduction, NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF™) has not been resting on any laurels. Work has been ongoing, and several updates are worth mentioning. And that’s exactly what the SNIA Networking Storage Forum will be doing on June 30th, 2020 at our live webcast, Notable Updates in NVMe-oF 1.1. There is more to a technology than its core standard, of course, and many different groups have been hard at work at improving upon, and fleshing out, many of the capabilities related to NVMe-oF.  In this webcast, we will explore a few of these projects and how they relate to implementing the technology. In particular, this webcast will be covering:
  • A summary of new items introduced in NVMe-oF 1.1
  • Updates regarding enhancements to FC-NVMe-2
  • How SNIA’s provisioning model helps NVMe-oF Ethernet Bunch of Flash (EBOF) devices
  • Managing and provisioning NVMe-oF devices with SNIA Swordfish
Register today for a look at what’s new in NVMe-oF. We hope to see you on June 30th.

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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Everyone Wants Their Java to Persist

Jim Fister

In this time of lockdown, I’m sure we’re all getting a little off kilter. I mean, it’s one thing to get caught up listening to tunes in your office to avoid going out and alerting your family of the fact that you haven’t changed your shirt in two days. It’s another thing to not know where a clean coffee cup is in the house so you can fill it and face the day starting sometime between 5AM and Noon. Okay, maybe we’re just talking about me, sorry. But you get the point.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had some caffeinated source that was good forever? I mean… persistence of Java? At this point, it’s not just me.

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The Power of Data Aggregation during a Pandemic

Glyn Bowden

The new coronavirus that has been ravaging countries and sending us all into lockdown is the most observed pandemic we’ve ever experienced. Data about the virus itself and perhaps more appropriately, the nations upon which it is having an impact have been shared from multiple sources. These include academic institutions such as John Hopkins University, national governments and international organisations such as the World Health Organisation. The data has been made available in many formats, from programmatically accessible APIs to downloadable comma delimited files to prepared data visualisations. We’ve never been more informed about the current status of anything.

Data Aggregation

What this newfound wealth of data has also brought to light is the true power of data aggregation. There is really only a limited number of conclusions that can be drawn from the number of active and resolved cases per nation and region. Over time, this can show us a trend and it also gives a very real snapshot of where we stand today. However, if we layer on additional data such as when actions were taken, we can see clear pictures of the impact of that strategy over time. With each nation taking differing approaches based on their own perceived position, mixed with culture and other socio-economic factors, we end up with a good side-by-side comparison of the strategies and their effectiveness. This is helping organisations and governments make decisions going forward, but data scientists globally are urging caution. In fact, the data we are producing today by processing all of these feeds may turn out to be far more valuable for the next pandemic, than it will for this one. It will be the analysis that helps create the “new normal.”

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Scaling Storage in Hybrid Cloud and Multicloud Environments

Pekon Gupta
As data growth in enterprises continues to skyrocket, striking balance between cost and scalability becomes a challenge. Businesses face key decision on how to deploy their cloud service, whether on premises, in hybrid cloud or in multicloud deployments. So, what are enterprise IT organizations supposed to do, given that ‘run anything anywhere’ is becoming more important than ever?  Find out on June 11, 2020, when the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative will host a live webcast, “Storage Scalability in Hybrid Cloud and Multicloud Environments.” This webcast will help architects and consumers of hybrid cloud and multicloud storage solutions better understand:
  • Trends and benefits of hybrid cloud storage and multicloud deployments
    • The range of technologies and capabilities which will help enterprise, hyperscalers and cloud service providers (CSPs) serve their customers
    • How scalability differs in block vs. file workloads
    • What are key factors to keep in mind when considering a ‘run anything anywhere’ objective?
We hope to see you on June 11th. Our expert presenters will all be on-hand to answer your questions. Register today

Business Resiliency in a Kubernetes World

Jim Fister
At the 2018 KubeCon keynote, Monzo Bank explained the potential risk of running a single massive Kubernetes cluster. A minor conflict between etcd and Java led to an outage during one of their busiest business days, prompting questions, like “If a cluster goes down can our business keep functioning?”  Understanding the business continuity implications of multiple Kubernetes clusters is an important topic and key area of debate. It’s an opportunity for the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) to host “A Multi-tenant Multi-cluster Kubernetes “Datapocalypse” is Coming” – a live webcast on June 23, 2020 where Kubernetes expert, Paul Burt, will dive into:
  • The history of multi-cluster Kubernetes
  • How multi-cluster setups could affect data heavy workloads (such as multiple microservices backed by independent data stores)
  • Managing multiple clusters
  • Keeping the business functioning if a cluster goes down
  • How to prepare for the coming “datapocalypse”
Multi-cluster Kubernetes that provides robustness and resiliency is rapidly moving from “best practice” to a “must have”. Register today to save your spot on June 23rd to learn more and have your questions answered. Need a refresher on Kubernetes? Check out the CSTI’s 3-part Kubernetes in the Cloud series to get up-to-speed.

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.