Recently, the SNIA Compute, Memory, and Storage Initiative hosted a live webcast “Data Movement and Computational Storage”, moderated by Jim Fister of The Decision Place with Nidish Kamath of KIOXIA, David McIntyre of Samsung, and Eli Tiomkin of NGD Systems as panelists.  We had a great discussion on new ways to look at storage, flexible computer systems, and how to put on your security hat.

During our conversation, we answered audience questions, and raised a few of our own!  Check out some of the back-and-forth, and tune in to the entire video for customer use cases and thoughts for the future.

Q:  What is the value of computational storage?

A:  With computational storage, you have latency sensitivity – you can make decisions faster at the edge and can also distribute computing to process decisions anywhere.

Q:  Why is it important to consider “data movement” with regard to computational storage?

A:  There is a reduction in data movement that computational storage brings to the system, along with higher efficiencies while moving that data and a reduction in power which users may not have yet considered.   

Q: How does power use change when computational storage is brought in?

A:  You want to “move” compute to that point in the system where operations can be accomplished where the data is “at rest”. In traditional systems, if you need to move data from storage to the host, there are power costs that may not even be currently measured.  However, if you can now run applications and not move data, you will realize that power reduction, which is more and more important with the anticipation of massive quantities of data coming in the future.

Q: Are the traditional processing/storage transistor counts the same with computational storage?

A:  With computational storage, you can put the programming where it is needed – moving the compute to that point in the system where it can achieve the work with limited amount of overhead and networking bandwidth. Compute moves to where the data sits at rest, which is especially important with the explosion of data sets.

Q:  Does computational storage play a role in data security and privacy?

A: Security threats don’t always happen at the same time, so you need to consider a top-down holistic perspective. It will be important both today and in the future to consider new security threats because of data movement.

There is always a risk for security when the data is moving; however, computational storage reduces the data movement significantly, and can play as a more secure way to treat data because the data is not moving as much. Computational storage allows you to lock the data, for example, medical data, and only process when needed and if needed in an authenticated and secure fashion.  There’s no requirement to build a whole system around this.

Q:  What are the computational storage opportunities at the edge? 

A:  We need to understand the ecosystem the computational storage device is going into. Computational storage sits at the front line of edge applications and management of edge infrastructure pieces in the cloud.  It’s a great time to embrace existing cloud policies and collaborate with customers on how policies will migrate and change to the edge.

Q: In your discussions with customers, how dynamic do they expect the sets of code running on computational storage to be? With the extremes being code never changing (installed once/updated rarely) to being different for every query or operation. Please discuss how challenges differ for these approaches.

A:  The heavy lift comes into play with the application and the system integration.  To run flexible code, customers want a simple, straightforward, and seamless programming model that enables them to run as many applications as they need and change them in an easy way without disrupting the system.  Clients are using computational storage to speed up the processing of their data with dynamic reconfiguring in cutting edge applications.  We are putting a lot of effort toward this seamless and transparent model with our work in the SNIA Computational Storage Technical Work Group.

Q:  What does computational storage mean for data in the future?

A: The infrastructure of data and data movement will drastically change in the future as edge emerges and cloud continues to grow. Using computational storage will be extremely beneficial in the new infrastructure, and we will need to work together as an ecosystem and under SNIA to make sure we are all aligned to provide the right solutions to the customer.  

Recently, the SNIA Compute, Memory, and Storage Initiative hosted a live webcast “Data Movement and Computational Storage”, moderated by Jim Fister of The Decision Place with Nidish Kamath of KIOXIA, David McIntyre of Samsung, and Eli Tiomkin of NGD Systems as panelists. We had a great discussion on new ways to look at storage, flexible computer systems, and how to put on your security hat. During our conversation, we answered audience questions, and raised a few of our own!  Check out some of the back-and-forth, and tune in to the entire video for customer use cases and thoughts for the future. Q:  What is the value of computational storage? A:  With computational storage, you have latency sensitivity – you can make decisions faster at the edge and can also distribute computing to process decisions anywhere. Q:  Why is it important to consider “data movement” with regard to computational storage? A:  There is a reduction in data movement that computational storage brings to the system, along with higher efficiencies while moving that data and a reduction in power which users may not have yet considered. Q: How does power use change when computational storage is brought in? A:  You want to “move” compute to that point in the system where operations can be accomplished where the data is “at rest”. In traditional systems, if you need to move data from storage to the host, there are power costs that may not even be currently measured.  However, if you can now run applications and not move data, you will realize that power reduction, which is more and more important with the anticipation of massive quantities of data coming in the future. Q: Are the traditional processing/storage transistor counts the same with computational storage? A:  With computational storage, you can put the programming where it is needed – moving the compute to that point in the system where it can achieve the work with limited amount of overhead and networking bandwidth. Compute moves to where the data sits at rest, which is especially important with the explosion of data sets. Q:  Does computational storage play a role in data security and privacy? A: Security threats don’t always happen at the same time, so you need to consider a top-down holistic perspective. It will be important both today and in the future to consider new security threats because of data movement. There is always a risk for security when the data is moving; however, computational storage reduces the data movement significantly, and can play as a more secure way to treat data because the data is not moving as much. Computational storage allows you to lock the data, for example, medical data, and only process when needed and if needed in an authenticated and secure fashion.  There’s no requirement to build a whole system around this. Q:  What are the computational storage opportunities at the edge?  A:  We need to understand the ecosystem the computational storage device is going into. Computational storage sits at the front line of edge applications and management of edge infrastructure pieces in the cloud.  It’s a great time to embrace existing cloud policies and collaborate with customers on how policies will migrate and change to the edge. Q: In your discussions with customers, how dynamic do they expect the sets of code running on computational storage to be? With the extremes being code never changing (installed once/updated rarely) to being different for every query or operation. Please discuss how challenges differ for these approaches. A:  The heavy lift comes into play with the application and the system integration.  To run flexible code, customers want a simple, straightforward, and seamless programming model that enables them to run as many applications as they need and change them in an easy way without disrupting the system.  Clients are using computational storage to speed up the processing of their data with dynamic reconfiguring in cutting edge applications.  We are putting a lot of effort toward this seamless and transparent model with our work in the SNIA Computational Storage Technical Work Group. Q:  What does computational storage mean for data in the future? A: The infrastructure of data and data movement will drastically change in the future as edge emerges and cloud continues to grow. Using computational storage will be extremely beneficial in the new infrastructure, and we will need to work together as an ecosystem and under SNIA to make sure we are all aligned to provide the right solutions to the customer. The post Q&A on Data Movement and Computational Storage first appeared on SNIA Compute, Memory and Storage Blog.

The need for improved data security and privacy seems to grow bigger every day. The continuous attacks and bad actors from hackers and rogue governments are increasing the demand from businesses and consumers alike to make stronger data protection a top priority. In the midst of this need, Confidential Computing has emerged as a solution for stronger data security and is gaining traction from a variety of start-ups and established companies. The SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) will be presenting a series of new webcasts on Confidential Computing. This three-part series will provide an introduction to Confidential Computing, dive into its unique approach for protecting data in use as well as use cases. I will be hosting the first discussion “What is Confidential Computing and Why Should I Care?” on June 9, 2021 featuring Mike Bursell, Co-founder, Enarx Project; David Kaplan of AMD and Ronald Perez at Intel – all members of the Confidential Computing Consortium. This panel discussion will detail the need for Confidential Computing, explain the technology basics, how it’s used, and why you should consider deploying some of these new concepts. These industry-expert panelists are the architects of Confidential Computing and they will be ready to take your questions. I encourage you to register today. The second session “Confidential Compute: Protecting Data in Use” will follow two weeks later on June 23, 2021 with a focus on how Confidential Computing works in multi-tenant cloud environments and how sensitive data can be isolated from other privileged portions of the stack. It will also provide insight on applications in financial services, healthcare industries, and broader enterprise applications. Glyn Bowden of HPE will moderate this session with our expert presenters Paul O’Neill and Parviz Peiravi from Intel. You can register here for this session. For the third session, we will delve deeper into use cases and provide more details on real-world opportunities for this new technology. Stay tuned at this blog and on Twitter @sniacloud_com for more details. CSTI is dedicated to helping educated on new technologies related the cloud and how they affect data.  Come join us as we explore Confidential Computing and how it will impact your business.

The need for improved data security and privacy seems to grow bigger every day. The continuous attacks and bad actors from hackers and rogue governments are increasing the demand from businesses and consumers alike to make stronger data protection a top priority. In the midst of this need, Confidential Computing has emerged as a solution for stronger data security and is gaining traction from a variety of start-ups and established companies. The SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) will be presenting a series of new webcasts on Confidential Computing. This three-part series will provide an introduction to Confidential Computing, dive into its unique approach for protecting data in use as well as use cases. I will be hosting the first discussion “What is Confidential Computing and Why Should I Care?” on June 9, 2021 featuring Mike Bursell, Co-founder, Enarx Project; David Kaplan of AMD and Ronald Perez at Intel – all members of the Confidential Computing Consortium. This panel discussion will detail the need for Confidential Computing, explain the technology basics, how it’s used, and why you should consider deploying some of these new concepts. These industry-expert panelists are the architects of Confidential Computing and they will be ready to take your questions. I encourage you to register today. The second session “Confidential Compute: Protecting Data in Use” will follow two weeks later on June 23, 2021 with a focus on how Confidential Computing works in multi-tenant cloud environments and how sensitive data can be isolated from other privileged portions of the stack. It will also provide insight on applications in financial services, healthcare industries, and broader enterprise applications. Glyn Bowden of HPE will moderate this session with our expert presenters Paul O’Neill and Parviz Peiravi from Intel. You can register here for this session. For the third session, we will delve deeper into use cases and provide more details on real-world opportunities for this new technology. Stay tuned at this blog and on Twitter @sniacloud_com for more details. CSTI is dedicated to helping educated on new technologies related the cloud and how they affect data.  Come join us as we explore Confidential Computing and how it will impact your business.

While data security in the enterprise has never been for the faint of heart, the move to a more contiguous enterprise/cloud workflow as well as the increase in Edge data processing has significantly impacted the work (and the blood pressure) of security professionals. In the “arms race” of security, new defensive tactics are always needed. One significant approach is Confidential Computing: a technology that can isolate data and execution in a secure space on a system, which takes the concept of security to new levels. This SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) webcast “What is Confidential Computing and Why Should I Care?” will provide an introduction and explanation of Confidential Computing and will feature a panel of industry architects responsible for defining Confidential Compute. It will be a lively conversation on topics including:

• The basics of hardware-based Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) and how they work to enable confidential computing
• How to architect solutions based around TEEs
• How this foundation fits with other security technologies
• Adjacencies to storage technologies

Register here to join us on June 9, 2021 for a discussion that’s sure to be both informational and entertaining.

SNIA’s 9th annual Summit was a success with a new name and an expanded focus - Persistent Memory + Computational Storage - from the data center to the edge.  

The Summit moved to a two-day virtual platform and drew twice as many attendees as the previous year. We experimented with 20-minute sessions to great success.  Attendees saw leading technology experts discussing real world applications and use cases, providing insights on technology trends and futures, and networking  in "live via the internet" panels and Birds-of-a-Feather sessions.

The recap of our 2021 event – agenda - abstracts - speaker bios – links to videos and presentations – is summarized on the PM+CS Summit home page. 

But we know your time is precious – so here are a few ways to sample a lot of great content presented over two full days.

1. Read our colleague Tom Coughlin’s Forbes blog on the event
2. Not only did Tom and Jim Handy present on memory futures at the event, but they also provided the fastest sub-7 minute recaps of both Wednesday’s and Thursday’s sessions with their lively commentary.
3. New to persistent memory and/or computational storage technologies?  Check out our tutorials featuring Persistent Memory and Computational Storage Special Interest Group leaders giving you what you need to know.
4. Love the back and forth?  You’ll enjoy the recordings of our live panel sessions where colleagues debate (and sometimes agree) on the topics of today:
   • What Does the Future Hold for Persistent Memory?
   • Benefits of Computation in CSD, CSA, CSP
   • Present and Future Uses for Computational Storage and Persistent Memory
   • Security Impacts to a Changing Storage Ecosystem
   • CXL:  Expanding the Memory Ecosystem
5. Is Persistent Memory your focus?  We’ve sorted the Persistent Memory Summit content for you in our SNIA Educational Library
6. A Computational Storage man or woman?  Here is the list of all the Computational Storage content during the Summit to watch via our SNIA Educational Library.
7. Want to get hands-on?  We have extended the opportunity to experience the  Persistent Memory Workshop and Hackathon with access to new cloud-based PM systems for more learning opportunities.

We extend a thank you and shout-out to our SNIA Compute, Memory, and Storage Initiative members and colleagues who presented in sessions and participated in panels. They represent these leading companies in the industry.

AMD, Arm, Coughlin Associates, Dell, Eideticom, Facebook, Futurewei Technologies, G2M Communications, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intuitive Cognition Consulting, Intel, Lenovo,  Los Alamos National Laboratory, MemVerge, Micron, Microsoft, MKW Ventures Consulting, NGD Systems, NVIDIA, Objective Analysis, Samsung, ScaleFlux, Silinnov Consulting, and SMART Modular Technologies.

We thank our Summit sponsors: Eideticom, MemVerge, Futurewei Technologies, SMART Modular Technologies, and NGD Systems; and the SNIA Compute Memory and Storage Initiative members who underwrote the event.

Finally, we thank you for your interest in SNIA Compute, Memory, and Storage Initiative outreach and education.  We look forward to seeing you at upcoming SNIA events, including our Storage Developer Conferences in EMEA, India, and the U.S.  Find out more details on SDC.

SNIA’s 9th annual Summit was a success with a new name and an expanded focus – Persistent Memory + Computational Storage – from the data center to the edge. The Summit moved to a two-day virtual platform and drew twice as many attendees as the previous year. We experimented with 20-minute sessions to great success.  Attendees saw leading technology experts discussing real world applications and use cases, providing insights on technology trends and futures, and networking  in “live via the internet” panels and Birds-of-a-Feather sessions. The recap of our 2021 event – agenda – abstracts – speaker bios – links to videos and presentations – is summarized on the PM+CS Summit home page. But we know your time is precious – so here are a few ways to sample a lot of great content presented over two full days.

1. Read our colleague Tom Coughlin’s Forbes blog on the event
2. Not only did Tom and Jim Handy present on memory futures at the event, but they also provided the fastest sub-7 minute recaps of both Wednesday’s and Thursday’s sessions with their lively commentary.
3. New to persistent memory and/or computational storage technologies?  Check out our tutorials featuring Persistent Memory and Computational Storage Special Interest Group leaders giving you what you need to know.
4. Love the back and forth?  You’ll enjoy the recordings of our live panel sessions where colleagues debate (and sometimes agree) on the topics of today:
   • What Does the Future Hold for Persistent Memory?
   • Benefits of Computation in CSD, CSA, CSP
   • Present and Future Uses for Computational Storage and Persistent Memory
   • Security Impacts to a Changing Storage Ecosystem
   • CXL:  Expanding the Memory Ecosystem
5. Is Persistent Memory your focus?  We’ve sorted the Persistent Memory Summit content for you in our SNIA Educational Library
6. A Computational Storage man or woman?  Here is the list of all the Computational Storage content during the Summit to watch via our SNIA Educational Library.
7. Want to get hands-on?  We have extended the opportunity to experience the  Persistent Memory Workshop and Hackathon with access to new cloud-based PM systems for more learning opportunities.

We extend a thank you and shout-out to our SNIA Compute, Memory, and Storage Initiative members and colleagues who presented in sessions and participated in panels. They represent these leading companies in the industry. AMD, Arm, Coughlin Associates, Dell, Eideticom, Facebook, Futurewei Technologies, G2M Communications, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intuitive Cognition Consulting, Intel, Lenovo,  Los Alamos National Laboratory, MemVerge, Micron, Microsoft, MKW Ventures Consulting, NGD Systems, NVIDIA, Objective Analysis, Samsung, ScaleFlux, Silinnov Consulting, and SMART Modular Technologies. Finally, we thank you for your interest in SNIA Compute, Memory, and Storage Initiative outreach and education.  We look forward to seeing you at upcoming SNIA events, including our Storage Developer Conferences in EMEA, India, and the U.S.  Find out more details on SDC. The post Dive – or Dip – into SNIA Persistent Memory + Computational Storage Summit Content first appeared on SNIA Compute, Memory and Storage Blog.

Recently, the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) hosted a live webcast “Cloud Analytics Drives Airplanes-as-a-Service” with Ben Howard, CTO of KinectAir. It was a fascinating discussion on how analytics is making this new commercial airline business take off. Ben has a history of innovation with multiple companies working on new flight technology, analytics, and artificial intelligence. In this session, he provided several insights from his experiences on how analytics can have a significant impact on every business. Aside from analytics, services such as business cards can also be incorporated. In the course of the conversation, we covered several questions, all of which were answered in the webcast. Here’s a preview of the questions along with some brief answers. Take an hour of your time to listen to the entire presentation, we think you’ll enjoy it. Q: What’s different about capturing data for Machine Learning? A: There’s a need to ensure that the data you’re capturing is valid data, and that it will contribute to the bottom line. But AI/ML is less rigorous than some other analytics in that it can absorb a broader array of data formats. Q: What are you gleaning from all the other data sources KinectAir is using? A: KinectAir uses a variety of sources for info, including things like weather, other airline’s schedules and flight plans, FAA data, customer preferences, and many other pieces of data.  This allows it to make quick decisions on relocating aircraft to take potential passengers during a weather or mechanical delay by larger airlines. It also allows the company to make intelligent decisions on flight pricing that can make flight options more attractive to customers. Q: How does predictive analytics impact the business? A: By focusing on the passenger, and identifying the true origin and destination of each passenger, the airline can adjust for different potential airports as well as traffic and weather info to route the passenger. For example, the passenger can be routed to a regional airport slightly farther away than his or her house to allow the airplane to pick up other passengers, thus making the flight less expensive. Airplanes can also be staged near large airports that typically have weather delays to pick up potential passengers with a flight cancelled. Q: Explain how KinectAir is using a Monte Carlo model, and how that works. A: The actual comment was: “So, essentially you’re gambling.”  Ben explained how the company uses all the available information to make an informed bet on what passengers will pay to connect to a specific route. In this way, the company can weigh the odds and find a way to generate a price that will make a sale, but also make a profit. This creates an environment to, “always say yes,” to a customer in a way that works for the customer and the company. In the course of the discussion, we not only discussed KinectAir, but we also talked about using analytics for other businesses. Ben discussed using visualization to improve farming, how to create an analytics strategy to run 100 miles, and how to listen to what customers want while providing what they actually need. We hope you enjoy watching this webcast as much as we did making it.

Recently, the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) hosted a live webcast “Cloud Analytics Drives Airplanes-as-a-Service” with Ben Howard, CTO of KinectAir. It was a fascinating discussion on how analytics is making this new commercial airline business take off.  Ben has a history of innovation with multiple companies working on new flight technology, analytics, and artificial intelligence. In this session, he provided several insights from his experiences on how analytics can have a significant impact on every business. In the course of the conversation, we covered several questions, all of which were answered in the webcast. Here’s a preview of the questions along with some brief answers. Take an hour of your time to listen to the entire presentation, we think you’ll enjoy it. Q: What’s different about capturing data for Machine Learning? A: There’s a need to ensure that the data you’re capturing is valid data, and that it will contribute to the bottom line. But AI/ML is less rigorous than some other analytics in that it can absorb a broader array of data formats. Q: What are you gleaning from all the other data sources KinectAir is using? A: KinectAir uses a variety of sources for info, including things like weather, other airline’s schedules and flight plans, FAA data, customer preferences, and many other pieces of data.  This allows it to make quick decisions on relocating aircraft to take potential passengers during a weather or mechanical delay by larger airlines. It also allows the company to make intelligent decisions on flight pricing that can make flight options more attractive to customers. Q: How does predictive analytics impact the business? A: By focusing on the passenger, and identifying the true origin and destination of each passenger, the airline can adjust for different potential airports as well as traffic and weather info to route the passenger. For example, the passenger can be routed to a regional airport slightly farther away than his or her house to allow the airplane to pick up other passengers, thus making the flight less expensive. Airplanes can also be staged near large airports that typically have weather delays to pick up potential passengers with a flight cancelled. Q: Explain how KinectAir is using a Monte Carlo model, and how that works. A: The actual comment was: “So, essentially you’re gambling.”  Ben explained how the company uses all the available information to make an informed bet on what passengers will pay to connect to a specific route. In this way, the company can weigh the odds and find a way to generate a price that will make a sale, but also make a profit. This creates an environment to, “always say yes,” to a customer in a way that works for the customer and the company. In the course of the discussion, we not only discussed KinectAir, but we also talked about using analytics for other businesses. Ben discussed using visualization to improve farming, how to create an analytics strategy to run 100 miles, and how to listen to what customers want while providing what they actually need. We hope you enjoy watching this webcast as much as we did making it.

With ever increasing threat vectors both inside and outside the data center, a compromised customer dataset can quickly result in a torrent of lost business data, eroded trust, significant penalties, and potential lawsuits. Potential vulnerabilities exist at every point when scaling out NVMe® storage, which requires data to be secured every time it leaves a server or the storage media, not just when leaving the data center. NVMe over Fabrics is poised to be the one of the most dominant storage transports of the future and securing and validating the vast amounts of data that will traverse this fabric is not just prudent, but paramount.

Ensuring the security of that data will be the topic of our SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) webcast “Security of Data on NVMe over Fabrics, the Armored Truck Way” on May 12, 2021. Join the webcast to hear industry experts discuss current and future strategies to secure and protect mission critical data.

You will learn:

• Industry trends and regulations around data security
• Potential threats and vulnerabilities
• Existing security mechanisms and best practices
• How to secure NVMe data in flight and at rest
• Ecosystem and market dynamics
• Upcoming standards

For those of you who follow the many educational webcasts that the NSF hosts, you may have noticed that we are discussing the important topic of data security a lot. In fact, there is an entire Storage Networking Security Webcast Series that dives into protecting data at rest, protecting data in flight, encryption, key management, and more. You might find it useful to check out some of the sessions before our May 12^th presentation.

Register today! We hope you will join us on May 12^th. And please bring your questions. Our experts will be ready to answer them.