Your Questions Answered – Applications Take Advantage of Persistent Memory Webcast

Marty Foltyn
We hope you had time to check out our recent webcast on Applications Take Advantage of Persistent Memory.  Raghu Kulkarni of Viking Technology, a member of the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative, did a great job laying the foundation for an understanding of Persistent Memory today, just in time for the SNIA Persistent Memory Summit. You can catch up on videos of Summit talks, along with the slides presented, here. During the webcast, we had many interesting questions.  Now, as promised, Raghu provides the answers.  Happy reading, and we hope to see you at one of our upcoming webcasts or events. Q.  Does NVDIMM-N encryption lower the performance levels that you presented? Read More

Author of NVMe™/TCP Spec Answers Your Questions

J Metz

900 people have already watched our SNIA Networking Storage Forum webcast, What NVMe™/TCP Means for Networked Storage? where Sagi Grimberg, lead author of the NVMe/TCP specification, and J Metz, Board Member for SNIA, explained what NVMe/TCP is all about. If you haven’t seen the webcast yet, check it out on-demand.

Like any new technology, there’s no shortage of areas for potential confusion or questions. In this FAQ blog, we try to clear up both.

Q. Who is responsible for updating NVMe Host Driver?

A. We assume you are referring to the Linux host driver (independent OS software vendors are responsible for developing their own drivers). Like any device driver and/or subsystem in Linux, the responsibility of maintenance is on the maintainer(s) listed under the MAINTAINERS file. The responsibility of contributing is shared by all the community members.

Q. What is the realistic timeframe to see a commercially available NVME over TCP driver for targets? Is one year from now (2020) fair?

Read More

Understanding Kubernetes in the Cloud

Mike Jochimsen

Ever wonder why and where you would want to use Kubernetes? You’re not alone, that’s why the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative is hosting a live webcast on May 2, 2019 “Kubernetes in the Cloud.”

Kubernetes (k8s) is an open-source system for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Kubernetes promises simplified management of cloud workloads at scale, whether on-premises, hybrid, or in a public cloud infrastructure, allowing effortless movement of workloads from cloud to cloud. By some reckonings, it is being deployed at a rate several times faster than virtualization.

In this webcast, we’ll introduce Kubernetes and present use cases that make clear where and why you would want to use it in your IT environment. We’ll also focus on the enterprise requirements of orchestration and containerization, and specifically on storage aspects and best practices, discussing:

  • What is Kubernetes? Why would you want to use it?
  • How does Kubernetes help in a multi-cloud/private cloud environment?
  • How does Kubernetes orchestrate and manage storage?
  • Can Kubernetes use Docker?
  • How do we provide persistence and data protection?
  • Example use cases

We’re fortunate to have great experts for this session, Matt Baldwin, the founder and former CEO of Stackpoint Cloud and now with NetApp and Ingo Fuchs, Chief Technologist, Cloud and DevOps at NetApp.

I hope you will register today to join us on May 2nd. It’s live which means our expert presenters will be on-hand to answer your questions on the spot.

Understanding Kubernetes in the Cloud

Mike Jochimsen
Ever wonder why and where you would want to use Kubernetes? You’re not alone, that’s why the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Imitative is hosting a live webcast on May 2, 2019 “Kubernetes in the Cloud.” Kubernetes (k8s) is an open-source system for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Kubernetes promises simplified management of cloud workloads at scale, whether on-premises, hybrid, or in a public cloud infrastructure, allowing effortless movement of workloads from cloud to cloud. By some reckonings, it is being deployed at a rate several times faster than virtualization. Read More

Innovating File System Architectures with NVMe

Marty Foltyn

It’s exciting to see the recent formation of the Solid State Drive Special Interest Group (SIG) here in the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative.  After all, everyone appreciates the ability to totally geek out about the latest drive technology and software for file systems.  Right? Hey, where’s everyone going? We have vacation pictures with the dog we stored that we want to show…

Solid state storage has long found its place with those seeking greater performance in systems, especially where smaller or more random block/file transfers are prevalent.  Single-system opportunity with NVMe drives is broad, and pretty much unquestioned by those building systems for the modern IT environments. Cloud, likewise, has found use of the technology where single-node performance makes a broader deployment relevant. Read More

Has Hybrid Cloud Reached a Tipping Point?

Michelle Tidwell
According to research from the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), IT organizations today are struggling to strike the right balance between public cloud and their on-premises infrastructure. Has hybrid cloud reached a tipping point? Find out on April 23, 2019 at our live webcast “The Hybrid Cloud Tipping Point” when the SNIA CSTI welcomes ESG senior analyst, Scott Sinclair, who will share research on current cloud trends, covering: Read More

Scale-Out File Systems FAQ

John Kim
On February 28th, the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) took at look at what’s happening in Scale-Out File Systems. We discussed general principles, design considerations, challenges, benchmarks and more. If you missed the live webcast, it’s now available on-demand. We did not have time to answer all the questions we received at the live event, so here are answers to them all. Q. Can scale-out file systems do Erasure coding? A. Indeed, Erasure coding is a common method to improve resilience. Q. How does one address the problem of a specific disk going down? Where does scale-out architecture provide redundancy? A. Disk failures typically are covered by RAID software. Some of scale-out software also use multiple replicators to mitigate the impact of disk failures. Read More

Composable Infrastructure Q&A

Alex McDonald
On February 13, 2019, the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) presented a live webcast, Why Composable Infrastructure? Our goal was to clearly explain the reasoning behind, and the benefits of, composable infrastructure in an educational, vendor-neutral way. We believe our speakers, Philip Kufeldt and Mike Jochimsen, did just that. Now, as promised, Philip and Mike have answered the many interesting questions we received during the live event. Q. Are composable infrastructure solutions incompatible with virtualized or containerized environments? Will these solutions only serve bare metal environments? A. Composable infrastructure solutions will eventually work across any environment that supports the orchestration toolsets. There are no compatibility issues between virtualization/containerization and composable infrastructure, even if they fundamentally look at allocation of resources within a defined resource differently. Read More

Got Questions on Container Storage? We’ve Got Answers!

Alex McDonald
Keeping up with changes in the world of container storage is not easy. That’s why the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative invited expert Keith Hudgins of Docker for a live webcast, “What’s New in Container Storage.” I encourage you to watch it on-demand. It’s well worth the approximately half-hour investment to get up to speed on container storage. As promised during the live event, here are answers to the questions we received: Q. How does the new Container Storage Interface fit in here? Read More

What Drives SNIA Technical Work?

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In 2019, SNIA On Storage is  partnering with the SNIA Technical Council Co-Chairs Bill Martin and Mark Carlson to chat about SNIA technical activities. In this blog, we chat with Mark on the catalysts for new SNIA work.  SNIA also invites you to check out our event calendar to meet SNIA in person across the globe in the next months.

SNIA On Storage (SOS):  A new year always brings new ideas, and I’m sure SNIA has some exciting activities planned for 2019.  But just how are new SNIA efforts created?

Mark Carlson (MC):  SNIA does not just sit back and dream up work to do, but rather relies on industry input and requirements.  A great example of how SNIA work is created is the 2018 launch of the Computational Storage Technical Work Group (TWG).  It all started at the Flash Memory Summit industry event with a simple Birds-of-a-Feather on a thing called “computational storage”.  Interest definitely was high – the room was packed – and the individuals assembled decided to use SNIA as the vehicle to do definition and standardization of this new concept. Read More