Technical Work Groups

SNIA's Technical Work Groups (TWGs) deliver information and standards that accelerate the adoption of storage networking. They support the SNIA mission, charting a course for the storage industry. If you are thinking about becoming a member of the SNIA, check out what our TWGs are doing. Benefits of joining a Technical Work Group include:

• Make sure the next revision of the standard meets the technical requirements of your company.
• Gain in-depth knowledge of the details in the standard being developed and as a result, become an expert on the standard.
• • Fastest way to become an Expert is through participation, not just reading the standard!
• Work with and get assistance from the other experts on the standard as you develop your implementation of the standard.
• Participate in the development and become an expert in the Software being developed in support of the standard.

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Cloud Storage TWG

The Cloud Storage TWG acts as the primary technical entity for the SNIA to identify, develop, and coordinate systems standards for Cloud Storage. This group aims to produce a comprehensive set of specifications and drives consistency of interface standards and messages across the various Cloud Storage related efforts. The TWG also documents system-level requirements and shares these with other Cloud Storage standards organizations under the guidance of the SNIA Technical Council and in cooperation with the SNIA Strategic Alliances Committee.

Disk Resource Management TWG

The Disk Resource Management (DRM) Work Group is defining standard data and interfaces for the management of disk storage facilities, as well as creating guidelines for implementing well-managed storage solutions. Data and interfaces are provided in support of the following management disciplines - Asset Management, Capacity Management and Planning, Availability and Performance Management, Configuration Management, Policy-based Management and Event Management. The goal is to allow an application or administrator to obtain all pertinent storage-related information, via a standard and secure infrastructure.

Fibre Channel TWG

The Fibre Channel TWG designs, develops, and details a Fibre Channel SAN management architecture and related specification and guidelines to provide input to and design of new Fibre Channel standards or extensions to existing standards in support of improved Fibre Channel operations, management, security, or interoperability.

File Systems Management TWG

The File System Management (FSM) Technical Work Group is dedicated to developing and defining or promoting standards for file system related Management of products, such as Network Attached Storage, Host File Systems, cluster File Systems and SAN File Systems, and developing supporting educational materials . The work group acts as an organizing and coordinating entity for File System Management efforts. The primary function of the TWG is to ensure consistency of file standards and messages across the various file system related efforts.

Green Storage TWG

The Green Storage TWG acts as the primary technical entity for the SNIA to identify, develop, and coordinate technical matters related to energy and cooling of storage networking products. To be effective, standard metrics must be a realistic reflection of efficiency: work accomplished per energy expended, allowing a determination of clear costs for operations. We believe that a variety of types of storage work must be considered, and that several distinct 'figures of merit' will be needed. We believe that the SNIA is uniquely qualified, as an impartial forum with the right participants, to create useful metrics for users.

Hypervisor Storage Interfaces TWG

The HSI TWG's overall goal is the extension to and/or development of standard interfaces for storage interactions (including, but not limited to provisioning, management, control and I/O operations) with and through hypervisors (the term "hypervisor" is used here in the generic sense).

It will when possible leverage pre-existing standards and standards bodies.  Since gaps do exist in the currently approved standards, and gaps may exist among the charters of the existing standards bodies, the purpose of this TWG is to identify those gaps, and either assist the appropriate standards body in closing those gaps, or when this avenue is not available, to close them with standards drafted by this TWG.

I/O Traces, Tools & Analysis TWG

The primary focus of the I/O Traces, Tools, and Analysis (IOTTA) TWG is to create a worldwide repository for storage-related I/O trace collection and analysis tools, application workloads, I/O traces, and best practices around such topics. That repository is located at http://iotta.snia.org

The I/O traces of interest to the IOTTA TWG include those up at the host (e.g., system call, file system), those involving a file server (e.g., NFS, CIFS) and those at the "transport level" (e.g., SCSI, Fibre Channel). I/O traces of application workloads along with the analysis and definition of common, recommended semantics and formats for I/O traces are also specific areas of focus for the TWG. Standardized I/O trace formats/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.

The IOTTA TWG is for those interested in the use of empirical data/metrics to better understand the actual operation and performance characteristics of storage I/O, especially as they pertain to application workloads. This includes not only storage vendors but also storage users as well as those within the academic community who are performing research related to storage I/O and storage devices.

Linear Tape File System (LTFS) TWG

The Linear Tape File System TWG was created for the purpose of developing SNIA Architecture related to the on-tape format for LTFS.

Long Term Retention TWG

The Long Term Retention (LTR) TWG is focused on the technical challenges of long term digital information retention & preservation, namely both physical ("bit") and logical preservation.

The TWG will generate reference architectures, create new technical definitions for formats, interfaces and services, and author educational materials. The group will be working to ensure that digital information can be efficiently and effectively preserved for many decades, even when devices are constantly being replaced, new technologies, applications and formats are introduced, consumers (designated communities) often change, and so on.

NDMP Software TWG

The NDMP Software TWG is a SNIA Software Development project which will create a set of code which implements current and future versions of the Network Data Management Protocol, an industry standard for network based backup of file servers. NDMP to date has been standardized by the NDMP organization at http://www.ndmp.org..

NVM Programming TWG

The NVM Programming TWG was created for the purpose of accelerating availability of software enabling NVM (Non-Volatile Memory) hardware.  The TWG creates specifications which provide guidance to operating system, device driver, and application developers. These specifications are vendor agnostic and support all the NVM technologies of member companies.

Security TWG

The Security TWG provides architectures and frameworks for the establishment of information security capabilities within the storage networking industry, including that of stored information in heterogeneous environments. The focus of the Security Work Group is directed toward long-term security solutions, taking into account any security inherent in underlying transports or technologies.

SMI-S Core TWG

The SMI-S Core TWG is responsible for all the common profiles and spec clauses within the SMI-S specification that are not owned by other TWGs.

Solid State Storage TWG

The Solid State Storage Technical Work Group has been created for the purpose of developing standards related to system implementations of Solid State Storage technology.
The Solid State Storage TWG:

• Acts as the primary technical entity for the SNIA to identify, develop, and coordinate systems standards for Solid State Storage.
• Produces a comprehensive set of specifications and drives consistency of interface standards and messages across the various Solid State Storage related efforts.
• Documents system-level requirements and shares these with other Solid State Storage standards organizations under the guidance of the SNIA Technical Council and in cooperation with the SNIA Strategic Alliances Committee.

Storage Media Library TWG

The Storage Media Library (SML) Work Group addresses issues with and opportunities for exploiting media libraries in a networked storage environment.

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For additional information on SNIA Technical Work Groups please contact the SNIA Technical Council Managing Director, Arnold Jones, at tcmd@snia.org.