SNIA Technical Projects

The following list provides an overview of the current SNIA technical projects.

• Specifications & Standards
• Software
• Other Technical Projects
  

The SNIA occasionally makes available public review draft copies of some of the technical work being developed.

If you are interested in participating in any of the following projects and your company is already a SNIA Member, then just sign up for your free login account.  If your company is not a SNIA Member please see about joining so that you can start participating.  To find out additional information about a particular project contact Arnold Jones, SNIA Technical Council Managing Director at tcmd@snia.org.

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SPECIFICATIONS & STANDARDS

Common RAID Disk Data Format (DDF) Specification

The Common RAID Disk Data Format specification defines a standard data structure describing how data is formatted across the disks in a RAID group. The Disk Data Format (DDF) structure allows a basic level of interoperability between different suppliers of RAID technology. The Common RAID DDF structure benefits storage users by enabling data-in-place migration among systems from different vendors.

Common Trace Semantics Specification

The Common Trace Semantics Specification defines common, recommended semantics for data in I/O traces. Standardized I/O trace semantics will enable the development and use of common I/O trace collection and analysis tools as well as facilitate the sharing of the I/O traces themselves.

Common Trace Format Specification

The Common Trace Format Specification defines standard formats for different types of I/O traces. Standardized I/O trace formats will enable the development and use of common I/O trace collection and analysis tools as well as facilitate the sharing of the I/O traces themselves.

Data Integrity Specification

The Data Integrity Specification defines a standardized means of providing end to end data integrity between an application and storage devices.

eXtensible Access Method (XAM) Specification

The XAM standard is an application to storage interface which empowers meta-data to instrument the automation of information-based management. This new interface gives applications a standard interface and metadata to communicate with object storage devices such as those characterized as "Fixed Content Aware Storage" to achieve interoperability, storage transparency, and automation for ILM-based practices, long term records retention, and information assurance (security).

Green Storage Metrics Specification

The Green Storage Metrics specification identifies metrics by which energy consumption and efficiency of storage networking products can be measured for the purposes of new product development, end-user customer evaluation, and regulatory standards development.

iSCSI Management API (IMA)

The iSCSI Management API defines a standard interface that applications can use to perform iSCSI management independent of the vendor of the iSCSI HBA. The IMA was designed to be implemented using a combination of a library and plugins.

Management Framework Specification

The Management Framework Specification defines each of the services that makes up a standard management framework. Services are defined in terms of their interfaces and behaviors. This framework lays the foundation for implementing higher level functions as services and applications that support lifecycle management, service level management and provisioning.

Multipath Management API (MMA)

The Multipath Management API allows a management application to discover the multipath devices on the current system and to discover the associated local and device ports. An implementation of the API may optionally include active management (failover, load balancing, manual path overrides). The API uses an architecture that allows multiple MP drivers installed on a system to each provide plugins to a common library. The plugins can support multipath drivers bundled with an OS, or drivers associated with an HBA, target device, or volume manager. This API can be used by host-based management applications and will also be included in the SMI-S Host Discovered Resources Profile for enterprise-wide multipath discovery and management. A client of the API should be able to move between platforms by simply recompiling.

Object-Based Storage Device (OSD) Specification

The OSD specification defines low-level storage device functions that enable accessing a storage device through a standard object interface rather than a traditional block-based interface such as SCSI or IDE. The OSD specification is published through INCITS T10 as part of the SCSI standard.

Self-Contained Information Retention Format (SIRF) Specification

A specification that defines a logical container format appropriate for the long-term storage of digital information.

Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S)

SMI-S defines a method for the interoperable management of a heterogeneous Storage Area Network (SAN), and describes the information available to a WBEM Client from an SMI-S compliant CIM Server and an object-oriented, XML-based, messaging-based interface designed to support the specific requirements of managing devices in and through SANs. Developer support for SMI-S is available through the SNIA SMI-S Google group.

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SOFTWARE

NDMP V4 Software

The NDMP V4 Software is a SNIA Software development project that implements version 4 of the NDMP standard, including extensions to the standard.

XAM Software Development Kit

The XAM Software Development Kit (XAM SDK) is a SNIA Software development project that implements the XAM Specification, an industry standard for fixed content storage. Developer support for XAM SDK is available through the SNIA XAM Google group.

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OTHER TECHNICAL PROJECTS

I/O Traces & Tools and Analysis (IOTTA) Repository

The I/O Traces, Tools and Analysis (IOTTA) TWG has created a worldwide repository for I/O trace collection and analysis tools, application workloads, I/O traces of workloads, and best practices around such topics. The repository is located at http://iotta.snia.org.

Key Programs