2020-2021 SNIA Board and Technical Council Election - Candidate Profiles and Ballot

Attention SNIA Voting Member Company Representatives -

Below, please find the candidate information and Ballot for the 2020-2021 SNIA Board of Directors and Technical Council (TC) Elections. It is important that we have your vote and endorsement of these Candidates as they will be playing a key role in the leadership of the storage industry and this organization.

The Board of Directors (Board) is the governing body of SNIA. It is composed of 10 Directors elected by the voting membership, and 3 Directors appointed by the Board. For the 2020-2021 Board, 6 Directors continue on the Board to serve their respective terms. Accordingly, 5 seats are open for election (for 2–year terms) by SNIA voting members and there are 5 Candidates for these seats. 2 seats will be open for Director appointments by the Board (after elections).

The Technical Council (TC) is the body of technical experts that guides the technical direction of the SNIA. It is typically composed of 8 voting members elected by the voting membership and 3 voting members nominated by the Technical Council and appointed by the Board of Directors. For the 2020-2021 TC, 4 elected members continue on the Council to serve the second year of their terms. Accordingly, 4 seats are open for election (for 2–year terms) by SNIA voting members and there are 6 Candidates for these seats. 3 seats will be open for appointment by the Board (after elections).

Please find and review information on each of the Board of Directors and Technical Council candidates below.

To vote (confidentially), complete and e-mail this - BALLOT and forward via e-mail to the Executive Director at executivedirector@snia.org

The deadline for submission of a ballot is midnight Pacific Time, September 30, 2020.

Thank You – your support for SNIA and the Storage Industry is appreciated.

Candidates for Board of Directors

Cody Hosterman

Voting Member Company: Pure Storage
Title: Technical Director of VMware Solutions
Length of Employment with Current Company: 6 years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 14 years
Education: BS, Information Sciences & Technology, Penn State

Previous SNIA Service:

The majority of my experience with SNIA has come down to two lanes: work within Pure Storage with our various SNIA representatives and through a SNIA webcast I did on core storage best practices for virtualization environments. https://sniansfblog.org/virtualization-and-storage-networking-best-pract... In this session myself, Jason Massae of VMware and J Metz overviewed storage fundamentals and best practices in a virtualized environment.

Employment History:

My IT career sprang from an internship at Penn State University. Once my internship ended, my department offered me a job in the support department. The team I worked on in Penn State Auxiliary and Business Services supported the IT infrastructure for the food services, dormitories, business services, event venues (essentially everything but the administration building, academic buildings, and athletics). In this role I supported the general IT environment and began a foray into system administration and virtualization. From there, I started at EMC Corporation focusing on the Symmetrix storage platform and integration of that platform with VMware products (best practices, integrations, solutions). I was at EMC for 6 years extending my work as the VMware ecosystem grew, to backup and recovery, replication (my heaviest focus, around SRDF) and active/active storage through the VPLEX platform. I subsequently went to Pure Storage when they were a fairly small company to build their VMware ecosystem from the ground up. Within Pure, I led the VMware solutions as a Solutions Architect. My role as the lead at Pure Storage for VMware solutions allowed me to become more active in VMware storage strategy for an entire company and the industry. Recently, I have been pushing the industry towards larger adoption of a VMware storage offering called Virtual Volumes, which I believe are transformative for the industry segment of external storage in VMware environments.

Industry Achievement Awards:

• VMware vExpert from 2013-present
• VMworld Distinguished Speaker
• #7 Rated Blog in the Top vBlog voting in 2019

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

In the past I have experienced influencing, improving (hopefully!), and working with the storage ecosystem of a single product (Symmetrix), followed by a single company (Pure Storage), followed by an industry segment (VMware storage integration). I would like to try to get involved in the storage industry as a whole and make a difference in a larger portion of the overall IT industry. I think membership in the Board of Directors of SNIA would provide me with a humbling opportunity to make a larger impact in storage and learn from a larger and more diverse group of individuals.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

Currently, none.

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

External block storage, NVMe-oF, Container persistent storage (Kubernetes, CSI etc), automation, and object storage.

Anything Else the SNIA Should Be Aware Of

• My blog
• Speaking sessions
• GestaltIT vVol interview
• Panel session on NVMe-oF
• Panel on VMware DR and vVols

Biography:

Cody Hosterman is the Technical Director of VMware Solution Engineering at Pure Storage and is charge of the technical VMware strategy for the FlashArray and Cloud Block Store product lines. This includes best practices, VMware product integration, co-engineering projects, and VMware/Pure ecosystem architectures. Cody has been a VMware vExpert since 2013, his blog was voted a #7 vBlog in 2019, and was named a VMworld Distinguished Speaker in 2020.

Chris Lionetti

Voting Member Company: HPE
Title: Reference Architect
Length of Employment with Current Company: 4 years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 24 years
Education: Associate

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

• I have served as the Chair for Education, Chair for SMI, Currently on the SNIA Board representing HPE.
• I have also participated as a TWG member and individual contributor for a number of group as well as authored OpenSource Tools (posted on GitHub) for SNIA.
• I have also presented a number of sessions for SNIA at various SNIA events and obtained consistently high customer satisfaction scores.
• I have represented the interests and Participated in SNIA for the companies listed in my Company history section.

Employment History:

• 1994-1998 - Hewlett Packard - Netserver Division - Customer Engineering
• 1998-2003 - Dell Computer - Enterprise Storage Group - Development + Custom Engineering
• 2003-2009 - Microsoft - SAN Architect for Live Operations
• 2009-2016 - NetApp - Reference Architect
• 2016-2017 - Nimble Storage - Reference Architect - Company Purchased by HPE
• 2017-Present- HPE - Reference Architect

Industry Achievement Awards:

• Certifications:MCSE,CCNA,A+/Server+/Storage+/Linux+/Project+/Network+,MCT,3COMWiz,HP-Star,DCSE,SNIA-101/201/301,HitachiPro,EMC-PP,BrocadePro,CIW
• 9 Various Patents related to Data Centers and Storage,
• 12+ Various White-Papers related to advanced Storage Topics

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

Ensuring that HPE stays involved with and advances the standards and goals of the SNIA community.  

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

DMTF (Focus on Redfish), SNIA, CompTIA (Certification development)

Describe Your Potential Areas of Interest

Storage Management, Education, Long Term Archives, Security, Object Storage, Containers

Biography:

Motivated, technical professional with a successful 20+ year track record of server and storage design and deployments. Talent for quickly mastering new technology, combined with excellent troubleshooting skills. demonstrated ability to find solutions to seemingly intractable business requirements.

J Metz

Voting Member Company: Rockport Networks
Title: Field TCO
Length of Employment with Current Company: 9 months
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 20+ years
Education: BA, MA, Ph.D

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

Currently Interim Chair, Board of Directors. Been a member of the Board since 2013. Active in the Communication Steering Committee, Networking Storage Forum, Strategy/KPI committee, CMSI TWG and SIG, as well as other various duties and responsibilities.

Employment History:

• Currently Field CTO for Rockport Networks, a Canadian startup. Have worked for Cisco, QLogic, Apple, as well as an independent entrepreneur for many years.

Industry Achievement Awards:

• Globally-recognized storage contributor, requested speaker, and author. Winner of Distinguished Speaker awards.

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

Would like to continue the work that I have begun with the SNIA Board. Have been responsible for the establishment of a library of educational content, member of ad hoc committees for the organization, and representative of SNIA at industry conferences and events.

List Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

Not currently affiliated with any other boards, but previously (up until 2020) was on the board of NVM Express and Fibre Channel Industry Association.

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

General storage and storage networking, computational storage, security, management, SNIA strategy, and influencing global storage regulations and understanding.

Anything Else the SNIA Should Be Aware Of:

I restore Jeeps and swing dance. Plus, I drink and I know things.

Biography:

J is Field CTO for Rockport Networks, but has a broad and eclectic background of both academic, corporate, and industry experience. He is an award-winning public speaker, author, and contributor to industry trade publications. He has been active in industry standards, currently on the Board of Directors Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), and formerly for the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA), and the Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) Promoter's Board. He received his Ph.D from the University of Georgia.

Shalom Shefa

Voting Member Company: Cisco Systems
Title: Sr Technical Marketing Engineer - UCS Storage & Security
Length of Employment with Current Company: 9 years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 30 years
Education: M.S., CIS, Florida Institute of Technology, 2008-10, B.S., IS, FIT, 1987-91

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

None.

Employment History:

• 2011-Present, Cisco Systems, Sr Technical Marketing Engineer - UCS Storage and Security, Responsible for outbound TME responsibilities, whitepapers, collateral, Cisco live, customer presentations, feature and enhancement specifications, and various product management functions.
• 2005-2011, Verizon, Distinguished Architect/Technical Team Lead - Enterprise SAN architecture and operations team responsible for all Verizon data centers
• 1993-2003, MCI Wireless, Sr. Manager, Architecture and Operations - Managed multiple teams responsible for architecture, operations, security, and monitoring of all back-end systems responsible for $1.3 billion revenue stream, Sr Manager Business Markets mobility and sales force automation systems, Manager of NT Architecture team - pioneered introduction of Windows NT in to enterprise product systems supporting 12K seat call centers, Sr System Architect MCI Small Business - designed Windows NT enterprise architecture and implemented to 12K+ seats.
• 1991-1993, IBM, System Analyst - Design/Operations of backend help desk supporting customer Walmart.

Industry Achievement Awards:

• Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) 2002 - Present
• Presented at various EMCWorld, NetApp Insight, and CiscoLive conferences (2011-Present)
• Member of Cisco MDS Technical Advisory Board 2008-2011
• Published in Windows NT Magazine, Computerworld, InformationWeek (1997-98)

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat

I remember back in 2005 or 2006 going to my first SNIA event. I was blown away by the caliber of talent presenting at the time. As I had been involved in various aspects of storage technology my entire career, it was nice to be around people with similar interests. I have always looked at SNIA as THE association which brings all the various storage technologies together one way or another. Standards may be being developed by other organizations, including SNIA of course, however SNIA in my mind brings everything together into a working system - ether to reality. I have been a colleague and friend of J Metz for many years now. When J approached me a few weeks ago about the possibility of joining the SNIA board - I was first honored and then asked J how he thought I could add to the organization. J listed out many items - I told him I would think about it and get back to him as I was in the middle of a move. Once the move was complete, I discussed with J a bit more and decided I would move forward. If my nomination is accepted, I hope to be able to add my many years of both architectural, operational, and marketing experience to SNIAs overall success.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

None at this time.

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

Although all areas of storage technology excite me, I am particularly interested in the marrying of Storage and Security technologies. Security of data-at-rest, in-flight, and in-use are all areas I am interested in delving deeper into and influencing the northbound trajectory. Other areas include data resiliency, performance, and integrity (erasure coding, RAID, NVMe, storage controllers, etc)

Biography:

I am currently a Sr Technical Marketing Engineering at Cisco working with the UCS product on storage and security technologies. Born and raised in the US, I moved with my family to Israel 2 years ago and work remotely from my Cisco team and HQ which are based in San Jose, CA. Hobbies include mountain biking, skiing, and fitness. I continue to train in the martial art of Tae Kwon Do, which I am currently a 3rd degree black belt (Kukkiwon, South Korea).

Paul von Stamwitz

Voting Member Company: Fujitsu
Title: Sr. Storage Architect
Length of Employment with Current Company: 10 years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 40 years
Education: BSEE, Tufts University

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

I have been a member of SNIA for over 20 years and I have had the pleasure of being on the Board of Directors this past year. I am a participant in the Computational Storage and the newly formed Smart Data Accelerator Interface (SDXI) TWGs. I also monitor several other TWGS (Object, NVMP, and Green Storage) in order for me to stay abreast with the current state of the industry.

Employment History:

• Honeywell Information Systems, Billerica MA, 1980-1985. Test Software Engineer.
• Adaptec, Milpitas CA, 1985-2000. Firmware/Software Engineer, Manager, Principal Engineer.
• TrueSAN Networks, San Jose CA, 2000-2003. VP Engineering.
• 3ware/AMCC, Sunnyvale CA, 2003-2009. Chief Technology Strategist.
• Fujitsu Technology and Business of America, 2010-present. Sr. Storage Architect.

Industry Achievement Awards:

• I am co-author of 5 patents.
• I was one of the original authors of the IETF iSCSI draft specification where my primary contribution was the security threat model.

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

I have had the pleasure of working with a great team of Directors and staff this past year and I am excited about new initiatives such as Computational Storage. I would like to continue to help lead SNIA, particularly in the area of HPC/AI, as well as in SNIA's outreach to University and Open Source communities.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

• Co-representative for Fujitsu on the CROSS Industrial Advisory Board, UC Santa Cruz.
• Membership in USENIX where I attend FAST and Hot Storage conferences regularly.
• Membership in IEEE primarily for access to publications and papers.

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

Software Defined Storage, Open Source Software, Computational Storage, Computation Memory, and Storage for HPC/AI.

Anything Else the SNIA Should Be Aware Of:

• At Adaptec I was active in IETF for iSCSI.
• At AMCC, I was the primary representative for SATA-IO, T10, and SFF committees.
• At Fujitsu, I was a member of Ceph’s original Advisory Board.

Biography:

Paul von Stamwitz has over 35 years of experience in the storage industry where he has had various roles as developer, manager, technologist, and strategist. He currently has a leadership role in the development and promotion of corporate strategies and roadmaps of Fujitsu’s storage products. He has led an advanced development team focused on next generation storage architectures, including Ceph, SPDK, and Software-Defined Storage. His current focus in on storage architectures for HPC.

Candidates for Technical Council

Curtis C. Ballard

Voting Member Company: Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Title: Distinguished Technologist
Length of Employment with Current Company: 25 years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 25 years
Education:Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering, Bob Jones University 1992; Master of Science, Computer Communications, Clemson University 1994

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

SNIA Technical Council elected member October 2018 to present.  SNIA TC advisory member May 2018 to Oct. 2018. SMI Swordfish NVM Express special topic working group active participant. I have extensive experience working in supporting roles for SNIA participants from my company and support of SNIA activities by other standards bodies.

Employment History:

• Hewlett Packard, 1994 – 2015
  
  • HP Storage
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise, 2015 to Present
  
  • HPE Storage

Industry Achievement Awards:

• INCITS Technical Excellence Award, 2011

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

I like working across multiple parts of a project and understanding how those parts work together to make a solution so I have always worked on tasks outside of my core responsibility to gain a better understanding of the big picture.  I got involved in industry standards in 2005 when I was asked to attend a few INCITS/T10 meetings to provide expertise in a specific technology. I found that standards meetings gave me the opportunity to learn about more of the storage industry including intent for how the standards pieces should work together as well as learning about different perspectives on design. Over time I was asked to pick up representation for all of Hewlett Packard Enterprise at INCITS/T10. Participating in the T10 standards has given me an opportunity to work on proposals across all aspects of the SCSI interface while helping me build my expertise in storage, storage interfaces, and how to write good specifications.  I have been able to serve development teams across my company by having the connections into the standards community and the expertise in the SCSI interface standards to be able to contribute to internal designs.

My background includes a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering with a focus on microprocessors and a Master’s degree in computer communications with a focus on high performance networking. Those two areas came together in the engineering work I have done at Hewlett Packard and Hewlett Packard Enterprise where I’ve participated in designs for both host and target storage products as well as storage networking designs for connecting them.  By participating in storage industry activities in parallel to driving initiatives to support my company I’m able to contribute to the storage industry by bringing the expertise I’ve developed through many years of electrical and firmware development while also developing new expertise due to being a participant in the design of new capabilities.  It is exciting to be able to contribute to the entire storage industry while also serving my company and growing personally.

Due to the long term value that I have been able to provide Hewlett Packard Enterprise through my effective participating in the T10 standards development and NVM Express specification development my management supports my participating on the SNIA TC.  In January of 2020 my management supported my running for and being elected to the NVM Express Board of Directors.  The two leadership roles, an elected member of the TC and NVMe BoD roles are complimentary.

As part of the INCITS/T10 committee I have contributed designs to nearly every part of the SCSI family of standards. Features that I designed and drove standardization of have been included in tape drives, medium changers, block devices, primary commands, enclosure management commands, SCSI to ATA translation, and SAS specifications.  Many of those features have been broadly implemented across the industry.  I have also served as the editor of draft standards and provided extensive review and comment to help refine work brought forward by other companies. In addition I have proven effective at coordinating technical experts across multiple teams and different companies and leading the combined experts to achieve a design that meets the needs of all.  I have also driven new technical development in the NVM Express meetings including leading a sub-team with representatives from most of the major storage providers where I was successful in guiding the team to a design that satisfied all of the participants.  At the same time I have been an active participant in NVM Express sub-teams led by others.  I would like to be able to bring those same skills to the SNIA TC.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

• INCITS T10
  
  • HPE Principal member, Vice-Chair, Editor of ADC-4, ADT-3 and SSC-5
  • Active participant in most T10 projects
• NVM Express
  
  • Member NVM Express Board of Directors
  • HPE Alternate, HPE technical lead
  • Active participant in NVM Express Technical WG, Management WG, and Fabrics and Multi-Domain Subsystems Technical WG
• INCITS T11 and INCITS T13
  
  • HPE Alternate

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

• Interfacing to storage, including byte, block, and object
• Storage media technology
• Storage management

Biography:

Curtis Ballard is a Distinguished Technologist with Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the HPE Storage organization.  Curtis has over 25 years of experience in storage and storage interfaces technologies.  While working at Hewlett Packard and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Curtis has worked in product design teams for magneto optical disk drives, medium changer devices, tape drives, disk arrays, and enclosure management devices.  He has worked on hardware designs for storage interfaces and storage controllers as well as firmware for motion control, storage interfaces, user interface, and embedded operating systems. 

Curtis currently focuses on emerging storage technologies for the HPE Storage R&D organization as well as representing HPE in industry standards bodies.  He is the vice-chair of INCITS/T10 SCSI Storage Interfaces Technical Committee, is an elected member of the SNIA Technical Council, is a member of the NVM Express Board of Directors, and is a contributing member for the NVM Express technical specification.  Curtis is currently the technical editor for several the INCITS/T10 standards.  He in an inventor on over 40 US patents in the storage industry across electrical, software, and mechanical disciplines and works in the Hewlett Packard Enterprise architecture community on storage architecture, intellectual property, and storage strategy.

Mark Carlson

Voting Member Company: Kioxia
Title:Principal Engineer, Industry Standards
Length of Employment with Current Company: 6 years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 37+ years
Education:BSEE, Washington State University

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

• Lead the transition into SNIA and initial development of SMI-S, chairing the TSG in the early years.
• Chair of the policy TWG and management frameworks TWG.
• Lead the formation of the Cloud Storage TWG (Chair) and Cloud Storage Initiative (Vice Chair)
• Lead the formation of the Object Drive TWG (Chair)
• Co-chair Standards Committee
• Co-Chair, SNIA Technical Council

Employment History:

• Numerous storage and networking companies
• Helped start a small software company in Boulder, CO called Redcape Policy Software that was then acquired in 1998 by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• Sun was acquired by Oracle in 2010
• Currently working for Kioxia

Industry Achievement Awards:

• SMI Distinguished Engineer
• DMTF Star Award
• SNIA Industry Impact award

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

I feel that I can continue to contribute to the SNIA as both a leader and champion of open interoperable standards and software. As storage technologies evolve, it is important that companies work together to increase the market adoption of these technologies and create standards to address customer pain points.  I will continue to serve as a catalyst for activities in the SNIA that return value to its members and benefit the industry.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

• NVM Express
• DMTF
• INCITS Cloud 38
• INCITS T10, T13
• NVM Express
• ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 38
• Open Compute Project
• Open Fabrics Alliance

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

• Cloud and Object (Drive)
• Hyperscaler/Datacenter Storage
• Redfish management of NVMe Drive
• Computational Storage

Biography:

Mark A. Carlson, Principal Engineer, Industry Standards at Toshiba Memory, has more than 35 years of experience with Networking and Storage development and more than twenty year's experience with Java technology. He has spoken at numerous industry forums and events. He has chaired the SNIA Object Drive, Cloud Storage, NDMP and XAM SDK technical working groups and serves as Co-Chairman on the SNIA Technical Council.

Frederick Knight

Voting Member Company: NetApp Inc
Title: Principal Standards Technologist
Length of Employment with Current Company: 14 years 9 months
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 43+ years
Education: BS

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

• TC member, Dictionary Contributor
• DI TWG, MMA TWG, HSI TWG chair;
• NVM TWG observer, Object Drive TWG observer, Computational TWG
• SDXI TWG
• Speaker at multiple SDC conferences, SNW conferences, BrightTalk presentations, and FMS (Flash Memory Summit) presentations; delivered talks on FC, FCoE, SCSI, SAN, iSCSI, NVMe, and NVMe-oF

Employment History:

• Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) / Compaq / HP (1977 – 2005):
  Principal Instructor – Taught customers and employees programming, OS usage / management, support methods and internal design
• Consulting Software Engineer – Develop Operating System software for multiple OSes (proprietary and UNIX based systems) at multiple layers including device drivers (for SCSI, ATA, and proprietary devices), file systems, networks, system services, memory management, user interface, and high availability (clustering).
• NetApp (2005 – present):
  Host Interoperability Architect – Drive interoperability of NetApp solutions across multiple host platforms to insure supportability, maintainability, and high customer satisfaction with NetApp storage solutions.

Industry Achievement Awards:

• INCITS Technical Excellence Award for work at T10
• INCITS Technical Excellence Award for work at T11
• INCITS Merit Award for longstanding contributions to INCITS International work
• INCITS Team member Award for T11 / FC-NVMe project
• Also see: http://www.incits.org/news-events/annual-awards

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

I would like to continue my involvement in SNIA to help provide support and guidance to the larger storage developer community, to increase the availability of additional storage standards, and broaden knowledge in the industry.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

• INCITS T10 (SCSI) – contributor, Editor of SES-3 and SAM-6 standard, International Representative
• INCITS T11 (Fibre Channel) – contributor
• INCITS T13 (ATA) – contributor, International Representative
• JEDEC JC45.6 - contributor
• ISO/IEC JTC1 – International Representative for T10 and T13;
  • ISO/IEC submission editor for T10 and T13 documents;
  • JTC1/SC25/WG4 Convenor
• NVM Express - Board of Directors
• NVMe Consortium – contributor, Editor

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

• Standards
• Education (including speaking @ SDC, and Brightalks)
• TWG oversite
• NVM Programming TWG
• Object Drive TWG
• Computational TWG
• SDXI TWG

Anything Else the SNIA Should Be Aware Of:

I have management support to continue in my role on the TC.

Biography:

Frederick Knight is a Principal Standards Technologist at NetApp Inc. Fred has over 40 years of experience in the computer and storage industry. He currently represents NetApp in several National and International Storage Standards bodies and industry associations, including T10 (SCSI), T11 (Fibre Channel), T13 (ATA), IETF (iSCSI), SNIA, and JEDEC. He was the chair of the SNIA Hypervisor Storage Interfaces working group, the primary author of the SNIA HSI White Paper, the author of the new IETF iSCSI update RFC, and the editor for the T10 SES-3 standard. He is also the editor for the SCSI Architecture Model (SAM-6) and the Convenor for the ISO/IEC JTC-1/SC25/WG4 international committee (which oversees the international standardization of T10/T11/T13 documents). Fred has received several NetApp awards for excellence and innovation as well as INCITS awards for his contributions to both T10 and T11 and his longstanding contributions to the international work of INCITS.

He was also the developer of the first native FCoE target device in the industry. At NetApp, he contributes to technology and product strategy and serves as a consulting engineer to product groups across the company. Prior to joining NetApp, Fred was a Consulting Engineer with Digital Equipment Corporation, Compaq, and HP where he worked on clustered operating system and I/O subsystem design.

Bill Lynn

Voting Member Company: Dell
Title: Distinguished Engineer
Length of Employment with Current Company: 14 years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 38 years
Education: BSEE, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

• Current member of SFF. Was the original editor of SFF-8609, SFF-8639, and SFF-9639. Currently the editor of SFF-TA-1008 and SFF-TA-1023.
• Founding member of IP Storage Forum. Served as secretary of IP Storage Forum and then was elected as the chair of the IP Storage Forum

Employment History:

• Digital Equipment, 1982 – 1992
• Adaptec, 1992 – 2006
• Dell, 2006 – Present

Industry Achievement Awards:

• SNIA IP Storage Forum Chairman’s Award
• Infiniband Author

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

I want to help steer the industry in the development of storage networking standards so that we can provide a seamless experience to customers using storage networking products

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

• Currently serving as the Dell representative to the NVMe Board of Directors
• Member of the OCP storage group

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

• Computational Storage, NVMeoF, and Storage Management

Biography:

Bill Lynn is a Distinguished Engineer in Dell’s Server CTO Architecture Pathfinding group. Bill has more than 35 years experience architecting and developing storage subsystems. Bill started out as a disk drive designer with Digital Equipment Corporation designing 9”, 5.25”, 3.5” and 2.5” disk drives. Later he moved to Adaptec working in sales, marketing, and eventually the Office of the CTO as a RAID architect. During his tenure at Adaptec Bill helped form the SNIA IP Storage Forum and served as the forum chair for 2 years. Bill ran the early iSCSI interoperability events before transitioning the iSCSI interoperability effort to UNH. Bill was also one of the authors of the Infiniband specification. In 2006 Bill moved to Dell where he was responsible for server storage architecture. Bill was the original author of the SFF-8639 U.2 connector specification and is one of the current editors of the SFF-TA-1008 EDSFF E3 device specification. Bill is now part of the Dell Architectural Pathfinding group and Dell’s representative to the NVMe Board of Directors.

Leah Schoeb

Voting Member Company: AMD
Title: Sr. Developer Relations Manager
Length of Employment with Current Company: 1 year 6months
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 30 years
Education: BSEE, MBA

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

I have been serving SNIA since 2007 and have been part of the Technical Council going on over a decade. I was the co-founder of the S4 TWG and have served as TWG chair on the Green and S4 TWGs and presented at several SNWs, DSIs and SDCs.

Employment History:

Leah Schoeb is a Sr. Developer Relations Manager responsible for storage strategy and architecture in the platform architecture team at AMD. She has 30 years of experience in the computer industry, with the last 2 decades in solid state technology. She was previously an evangelist for SAAS Data Protection solutions for Rubrik, and Acting Director of Storage Solutions Reference Architecture at Intel, where she led a team of segment managers and architects managing cross functional teams for flash and NVMe based data solutions, and reference architectures in major cloud and enterprise solution design assignments. She has held other architecture and engineering positions at VMware, Dell, and Sun Microsystems. She has many publications on such subjects as optimizing Oracle, automated tiering, and solid state performance specifications, and has presented at many technical conferences including SNIA’s Storage Developer Conference and Data Storage Innovation Conference and currently serves as the Updates Chairperson for Flash Memory Summit.

Industry Achievement Awards:

I received awards from the SNIA in early 2012 for my contribution to the GSI and the Green TWG. Received an award of appreciation for my participation as the 1st day instructor for the Emerald Training. I have also receive leadership awards for leadership participation in the other industry associations as well.

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

I have spent most of my career as forward thinker in technology to help solve the challenges that server computing and networking have created for storage technology. This has always been the best part of my career when I get the chance to participate in technology futures, like participating in SNIA activities. I think that the Technical Council is another outlet for this kind of work and I enjoy the helping the storage industry to develop new areas for the organization’s future.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

• PCIe SIG

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

Computational Storage, All forms of non-volatile memory, and the use cases for this technology

Biography:

Leah Schoeb is a Sr. Developer Relations Manager responsible for storage strategy and architecture in the platform architecture team at AMD. She is also the Founding Data Architect at Data Glass, where she helps systems companies with performance engineering and optimization, market positioning, and benchmarking and also architects virtualized, containerized, and big data solutions. She has over 30 years experience in the computer industry, with the last decade in solid state technology. She was previously Acting Director for Storage Solutions Reference Architecture at Intel, where she led a team of segment managers and architects managing cross functional teams for flash and NVMe based data solutions, and reference architectures in major cloud and enterprise solution design assignments. She has prior experience as a Sr Partner at the analyst firm Evaluator Group, where she focused on storage, virtualization, and cloud infrastructure. She has held management and engineering positions at VMware, Dell, and SunMicrosystems. She has over ten publications on such subjects as optimizing Oracle, automated tiering, and solid state performance specifications, and has presented at many technical conferences including SNIA’s Storage Developer Conference and Data Storage Innovation Conference. She currently serves as as a voting member of the Technical Council the Updates Chairperson for Flash Memory Summit. Leah has also participated and provided thought leadership for industry groups such as the Transaction Performance Council (TPC), Storage Performance Council (SPC), and Update Chairperson for Flash Memory Summit. She is a co-founder of their Solid State Storage System Technical Work Group. She earned a MBA at the University of Phoenix and a Leah Schoeb is a Sr. Developer Relations Manager in the platform architecture team at AMD. She is also the Founding Data Architect at Data Glass, where she helps systems companies with performance engineering and optimization, market positioning, and benchmarking. She also architects virtualized, containerized, and big data solutions. She has over 25 years of experience in the computer industry, with the last decade in solid state technology. She was previously Acting Director Business Development at Intel, where she led a team of segment managers and architects managing cross functional teams for flash and NVMe based data solutions, and reference architectures in major cloud and enterprise solution design assignments. She has prior experience as a Sr Partner at the analyst firm Evaluator Group, where she focused on storage, virtualization, and cloud infrastructure. She has held management and engineering positions at VMware, Dell, and Sun Microsystems. She has ten publications on such subjects as optimizing Oracle, automated tiering, and solid state performance specifications, and has presented at many technical conferences including SNIA’s Storage Developer Conference and Data Storage Innovation Conference. She currently serves as the Updates Chairperson for Flash Memory Summit. Leah has also participated and provided thought leadership for industry groups such as the Transaction Performance Council (TPC), Storage Performance Council (SPC), and Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). She is a member of the SNIA Technical Council and a co-founder of their Solid State Storage System Technical Work Group. She earned a BSEE at the University of Maryland College Park and MBA at the University of Phoenix.

Steven Wilson

Voting Member Company: Broadcom
Title: Director of Technology and Standards
Length of Employment with Current Company: 21 years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 42 years
Education: B.S. Computer Science, Cal Poly.

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

Steve has been involved with the SNIA since 1998. He established and chaired the SNIA Fibre Channel Work Group in its various forms, contributed to the NSF, Green, and Dictionary activities, and serves as an elected member to the SNIA Technical Council. Steve also serves as principal liaison between the FCIA/T11 and the SNIA.

Employment History:

• 1979 to Present. Prior to Broadcom, Steve held technical leadership positions with Brocade, Amdahl, ISS/Sperry Univac, Memorex, and Trilogy Systems. The emphasis of his technical work at these companies was the development and implementation of computer, storage, and systems management technologies.

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

To continue my contribution to maintaining SNIA as the premier industry venue for networked storage innovation, education and standards. To further the SNIA organization itself. To continue SNIA’s groundbreaking work in Remote Persistent Memory and ultra-low latency storage.

Industry Achievement Awards:

Steve is the recipient of the INCITS Technical Excellence Award for his work on the Fibre Channel switching standards, and has received the INCITS Gene Milligan award for effective committee management. In addition Steve has received numerous awards for his SNIA contributions.

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

To further develop storage networking technologies to address new and emerging business applications.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

• Chairman, INCITS TC T11
• FCIA Board Member
• SNIA Technical Council Member

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

NVMe over Fabrics (Fibre Channel), Computational Storage, Persistent Memory, Blockchain, Advanced Security.

Anything Else the SNIA Should Be Aware Of:

Steve holds multiple patents in the storage networking space.

Biography:

Steve Wilson is Director of Technology and Standards at Broadcom. Steve’s responsibilities include the development of technologies and architectures for storage networking and storage management. Steve is a principal contributor to the ANSI T11 Fibre Channel standards and SNIA technical activities.

Prior to Broadcom, Steve held technical leadership positions with Brocade, Amdahl, ISS/Sperry Univac, Memorex, and Trilogy Systems. The emphasis of his technical work at these companies was the development and implementation of computer, storage, and systems management technologies.

Steve serves as chairman of the INCITS T11 committee whose charter is to develop the Fibre Channel Interfaces. Steve continues contributing to many ANSI Fibre Channel standards including NVMe over Fibre Channel, Switch Fabric, Fabric Services, and Persistent Memory. Steve also serves on the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) Board of Directors.

Steve has been involved with the SNIA since 1998. He established and chaired the SNIA Fibre Channel Work Group in its various forms, contributed to the Green, NSF, and Dictionary activities, and now serves as a member of the SNIA Technical Council. Steve also serves as principal liaison between the FCIA/T11 and the SNIA.

Steve is the recipient of the INCITS Technical Excellence Award for his work on the Fibre Channel switching standards, and has received the INCITS Gene Milligan award for effective committee management. Steve holds multiple patents in the storage networking space and holds a degree in Computer Science from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.