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:

• Ensure 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

Common RAID Disk Data Format TWG

The Common RAID Disk Data Format (DDF) TWG is developing a standard methodology for representing the data structures that contain information describing how data is distributed across the drives in a RAID group. The methodology will include the location, size, and format of common descriptive data structures and will include methods for allowing the representation of proprietary formats and functions to support innovation and differentiation between RAID offerings from different vendors.

Data Integrity TWG

The Data Integrity TWG is the technical arm within SNIA that will specify a standardized means of providing end to end data integrity between an application and storage devices, and will provide guidance and educational direction to other SNIA TWG's and the industry at large. This work will fully leverage the existing INCITS T10-SBC standard utilizing the Protection Information Model as well as other data integrity standards will be under consideration.

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 Area Network (FAN) TWG

The definition of a FAN as stated in the SNIA dictionary is as follows:

File Area Network: A namespace-based network-oriented infrastructure for files that includes a decoupling layer which separates logical file access from physical file location. This decoupling layer enables a variety of services (e.g., replication and migration) to be applied to files and filesystems.

The FAN TWG is working on creating a FAN Reference Model, that will identify FAN components, their associated interfaces, and any associated services that the model requires. These will be rigorously documented so as the resultant documents can be used in the creation of one or more technical specifications. Work items addressed by the FAN TWG are not intended to follow a SNIA architecture track.

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.

File Systems Management Regional TWG

The File Systems Management Regional Technical Work Group for India is dedicated to supplementing the FSM TWG in developing and defining or promoting standards for filesystem related Management of products, such as Host Filesystems, cluster filesystems, and common subprofiles used by multilple autonomous filesystem profiles, and developing supporting educational materials
The File Systems Management Regional Technical Work Group for India will leverage and support management of existing file sharing standards both remote and local..

Fixed Content Aware Storage TWG

The Fixed Content Aware Storage (FCAS) TWG serves as a center of technical activities related to new application-level interfaces for storage of unchanging data (fixed content) and associated metadata based on a variety of naming schemas including Content Addressed Storage and global content-independent identifiers.

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.

Host TWG

The Host TWG serves as a center of technical activity related to management of storage hardware and hardware-enabling software associated with hosts. This includes development of SMI-S CIM profiles and subprofiles that cover host storage resources. The TWG also addresses host-focused storage APIs.

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.

IP Storage TWG

The IP Storage (IPS) TWG is the primary technical focal point at SNIA for IP Storage technical issues, coordinating with the IP Storage Forum.  Its current focus is the management of IP Storage technologies.

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.

Management Application TWG

The Management Application (MAP) TWG provides management application vendors an opportunity to participate in and influence the SNIA Storage Management Initiative to meet the needs of the Management Application community. The MAP TWG works with Management Application representatives and the other TWGs to identify and develop SMI-S requirements and issues resolutions that meet the needs of storage management applications.
 
The MAP TWG also drives the definition of end-to-end management capabilities in SMI-S that include cross-profile considerations & recipes, SMI-S scalability, health & fault management, performance management, and SMI-S management services.

Management Frameworks TWG

The Management Frameworks (MF) TWG is dedicated to developing and defining standards for Management Framework common components. The work group acts as an organizing and coordinating entity for such Management Framework efforts. The primary function of the TWG is to ensure consistency of interface standards and messages across the various framework-related standardization efforts in other TWGs and subgroups and produce a comprehensive specification.

Management Protocol TWG

The Management Protocol TWG works on the management protocol components of the SNIA Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S).

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..

Object-Based Storage Device TWG

Object-Based Storage Devices (OSD) enable the creation of self-managed, heterogeneous, shared storage by moving low-level storage functions into the storage device itself and accessing the device through a standard object interface rather than a traditional block-based interface such as SCSI or IDE.  The OSD TWG develops models and guidelines, requirement statements, preliminary standards definitions, reference code, and prototype demonstrations for OSD storage subsystems.

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.

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.

XAM Software Development Kit (SDK) TWG

The XAM Software Development Kit Technical Working Group (XAM SDK TWG) is a SNIA Software Development project according to the new governance documents recently approved by the SNIA membership. The group proposes to develop SNIA Software that implements current and future versions of the Fixed Content Aware Storage (FCAS) TWG XAM Specification(s), an industry standard for fixed content storage. This software (binaries and source) is intended to go through the SNIA Software adoption process and be made available to non-SNIA members.

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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.

 

Key Programs

• Data Management Forum
• Green Storage Initiative
• Storage Management Initiative (SMI)
• XAM Initiative