Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have had quite the impact on most industries in the last couple of years, but what about the effect on our own IT industry? On April 1, 2020, the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative will host a live webcast, “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Storage and IT, where our experts will explore how AI is changing the nature of applications, the shape of the data center, and its demands on storage. Learn how the rise of ML can develop new insights and capabilities for IT operations. In this webcast, we will explore:

• What is meant by Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning?
• The AI market opportunity
• The anatomy of an AI Solution
• Typical storage requirements of AI and the demands on the supporting infrastructure
• The growing field of IT operations leveraging AI (aka AIOps)

Yes, we know this is on April 1st, but it’s no joke! So, don’t be fooled and find out why everyone is talking about AI now. Register today

Contrary to popular belief, securing “data at rest” does not simply mean encrypting the data prior to storage. While it is true that data encryption plays a major role in securing “data at rest,” there are several other factors that come into play and are as important as encryption. It’s the next topic the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) will cover in our Storage Networking Security Series. On April 29, 2020, we will host a live webcast, “Storage Networking Security Series: Protecting Data at Rest,” where we will cover the end-to-end process of securing “data at rest,” and discuss all the factors and trade-offs that must be considered, and some of the general risks that need to be mitigated. As this series shows, there are many places along the chain where a weak link can break the entire process. One of the key aspects of keeping data secure – and probably the place where most people think of security – is what happens when the data is “at rest,” or being stored in some sort of stable media. Join us as we break down the aspects of securing data at rest as part of the overall goal of understanding storage security. In particular, we’ll be looking at:

• How the requirements for “data at rest” differ from “data in flight”
• Understanding the costs of ransomware
• How to protect cryptographic keys from malicious actors
• Using key managers to properly manage cryptographic keys
• Strengths and weaknesses of relying on government security recommendations
• The importance of validating data backups… how stable is your media?

As the process for storing data securely is involved, this Storage Networking Security Series is dedicated to providing ongoing education for placing these very important parts into the much larger whole. We hope you are able to join us on April 29^th as we spend some time on this very important piece of the puzzle. Register today.

Have you heard about QUIC? Although initially proposed as the acronym for “Quick UDP Internet Connections,” IETF’s use of the word QUIC is not an acronym; it is merely the name of the protocol. QUIC is a new UDP-based transport protocol for the Internet, and specifically, the web. Originally designed and deployed by Google, it already makes up 35% of Google’s egress traffic, which corresponds to about 7% of all Internet traffic. Due to its ability to improve connection-oriented web application performance, it is gaining enthusiastic interest by many other large Internet players in the ongoing IETF standardization process, which is likely to lead to an even greater deployment. The SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) is going to explore the potential impact of QUIC in our live webcast on April 2, 2020 “QUIC – Will it Replace TCP/IP?” In this session, Lars Eggert, Chair of the QUIC Working Group within IEFT, will discuss:

• Unique design aspects of QUIC
• Differences to the conventional HTTP/TLS/TCP web stack
• Early performance numbers
• Potential side effects of a broader deployment of QUIC

It should be an insightful overview of this interesting technology. Please register today to save your spot. We hope to see you on April 2nd.

First, it is now well understood that the CCPA* mandates strict requirements for companies to notify users about how their data will be used, along with giving customers the ability to “Opt Out” and request that their data be deleted, mirroring some of the primary aspects of the EU GDPR legislation known as the ‘right to be forgotten.’

I was reading a recent article from ThreatPost, entitled: “California’s Tough New Privacy Law and its Biggest Challenges,” and I realized that this article brought up something that I was thinking about even before the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was enacted at the beginning of this year (2020).

*CCPA applies to companies that are storing 50,000+ records worth of consumer data.

The interesting part is that companies may have quite a hard time keeping track of the actual stored location of the user data that they initially collected.

The example cited in the article is in the difficulties posed in tracking data that has been collected, then placed in a database, or even given to a third-party to carry out a marketing campaign. It may be a marketing database or just a one-month long program that gave some kind of special promotion to encourage people to register, and once the campaign is over it’s hard to find the data, especially the older it is.

There are likely to be many such examples where consumer data does not typically carry sophisticated tracking to the point where it will be difficult to prove compliance when the legislation demands it. Businesses will be expected to show:

1.    How consumer data is going to be used

2.    How consumer data is going to be protected while being used

3.    How consumer data will be deleted

4.    Proof of all the above

Ultimately, how well a company tracks the data it collects, along with the associated processes and procedures to prove that these activities are being performed, will dictate their success or failure in complying with the CCPA.

iSCSI is a block storage protocol for storage networking. It’s been around since 1988, is supported by multiple operating systems, and has been a standard since 2000. iSCSI has been used mostly for so-called “secondary” block storage, meaning storage for applications that are important but not mission-critical, and storage that must deliver good—but not great—performance. The fact that iSCSI runs on Ethernet and can be deployed without specialized hardware has made it very popular in clouds and cloud storage, so its usage has blossomed with the growth of cloud. Today, iSCSI is the most popular way to access block storage over Ethernet networks. The Threat to iSCSI However, the emergence of NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) now threatens to displace iSCSI for high-performance block storage access to flash storage. Simultaneously, the growing use of file and object storage poses a threat to both iSCSI and to Fibre Channel SANs. How great is the risk to iSCSI? What does the future hold? Find out in a recent Digitalisation World article by John F. Kim, Chair of the SNIA Networking Storage Forum, “iSCSI – Is it the Future of Cloud Storage or Doomed by NVMe-oF,” where John outlines iSCSI advantages, limitations and growth prospects amid the high performance and growing popularity of NVMe-oF. It’s an interesting read about what the future may hold for this ubiquitous storage protocol.

Visit our “Geek Out on Storage” page for a unique lesson on storage basics. We call it “Everything You Wanted to Know About Storage But Were Too Proud to Ask.” Here you’ll find videos that clearly define and explain storage terminology and technologies.

You can start by making sure you really understand the basics in our “Naming of the Storage Parts.” Here, our experts break down and clearly define terms like initiators & targets, RAID, controllers, volume managers and storage stacks. Find out what they are and how they really work.

Want to dive deeper? There are 9 more “Everything You Wanted to Know About Storage But Were Too Proud to Ask” videos that offer vendor-neutral education on memory, storage management, architecture, buffers, queues & caches and more. You pick and choose the ones that you want to “Geek Out” on.

While you’re geeking out, you’ll have access to other SNIA educational assets and tools like the SNIA Educational Library which houses more than 2,000 white papers, technical specifications, podcast, presentations and more, the SNIA Online Dictionary that provides succinct definitions on more thatn 1,900 technology terms, our What Is pages and the SNIAVideo YouTube channel.

SNIA is committed to delivering vendor-neutral education to help advance storage and information technology. SNIA members are experts in all things related to storage and come to SNIA to take off their vendor hats to promote standards and education that will enhance the industry as a whole. We hope you find this information valuable and learn something new that elevates your storage geek status!

If you’re a storage equipment or management software vendor that uses SNIA’s Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) as the storage management interface for your solution, you’re not alone.

First introduced in 2004, SMI-S has been used in over 1,350 storage products by some of the largest vendors in the industry. It defines a secure and reliable interface that can be used to discover, monitor, and control the physical and logical devices in enterprise storage area networks. Unlike proprietary management interfaces, SMI-S is a standard interface that allows management applications to reliably support a wider range of storage equipment from multiple vendors.

 

SNIA recently approved SMI-S Version 1.8.0 Revision 4 as a Technical Position, making it the latest official version of the specification. Work is in progress to forward this version of the specification to ISO to become the newest international version of the SMI-S standard.

If you’re using SMI-S to address day-to-day tasks in IT environments and haven’t made the leap to SMI-S Version 1.8.0 yet, now is the time to jump on board. There are new indications, methods, properties and profiles, as explained in the free webinar found here.

What makes SMI-S unique is the SNIA Conformance Testing Program (CTP) for SMI-S Providers. SMI-S CTP enables manufacturers to test their standards-based products with vendor-neutral tools that validate conformance to a specific version of the specification. Once certified, these products are listed on the public SNIA web site as having passed SMI-S CTP testing. The SMI-S Version 1.8.0 CTP Test Suite is available now. Learn more here.

If you’d like to learn more about SMI-S, visit www.snia.org/smis for a one-page collection of pointers to SMI-S resources, including all versions of the specification, an SMI-S Getting Started Guide, educational material, and open source information that can help with the development of SMI-S implementations.

If you’re a storage equipment or management software vendor that uses SNIA’s Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) as the storage management interface for your solution, you’re not alone. First introduced in 2004, SMI-S has been used in over 1,350 storage products by some of the largest vendors in the industry. It defines a secure and reliable interface that can be used to discover, monitor, and control the physical and logical devices in enterprise storage area networks. Unlike proprietary management interfaces, SMI-S is a standard interface that allows management applications to reliably support a wider range of storage equipment from multiple vendors. SNIA recently approved SMI-S Version 1.8.0 Revision 4 as a Technical Position, making it the latest official version of the specification. Work is in progress to forward this version of the specification to ISO to become the newest international version of the SMI-S standard. If you’re using SMI-S to address day-to-day tasks in IT environments and haven’t made the leap to SMI-S Version 1.8.0 yet, now is the time to jump on board. There are new indications, methods, properties and profiles, as explained in the free webinar found here. What makes SMI-S unique is the SNIA Conformance Testing Program (CTP) for SMI-S Providers. SMI-S CTP enables manufacturers to test their standards-based products with vendor-neutral tools that validate conformance to a specific version of the specification. Once certified, these products are listed on the public SNIA web site as having passed SMI-S CTP testing. The SMI-S Version 1.8.0 CTP Test Suite is available now. Learn more here. If you’d like to learn more about SMI-S, visit www.snia.org/smis for a one-page collection of pointers to SMI-S resources, including all versions of the specification, an SMI-S Getting Started Guide, educational material, and open source information that can help with the development of SMI-S implementations.

Several solid state disk (SSD) and networking vendors have demonstrated ways to connect SSDs directly to an Ethernet network. They propose that deploying Ethernet SSDs will be more scalable, easier to manage, higher performance, and/or lower cost than traditional storage networking solutions that use a storage controller (or hyperconverged node) between the SSDs and the network. Who would want to attach SSDs directly to the network? Are these vendors brilliant or simply trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist? What are the different solutions that could benefit from Ethernet SSDs? Which protocols would one use to access them? How will orchestration be used to enable applications to find assigned Ethernet SSDs? How will Ethernet SSDs affect server subsystems such as Ethernet RAID/mirroring and affect solution management such as Ethernet SAN orchestration?  And how do Ethernet SSDs relate to computational storage? Find out on March 17, 2020 when the SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum presents a live webcast, “Ethernet-attached SSDs—Brilliant Idea or Storage Silliness? In this webcast, SNIA experts will discuss:

• Appropriate use cases for Ethernet SSDs
• Why Ethernet SSDs could be cost-effective and efficient
• How Ethernet SSDs compare to other forms of storage networking
• Different ways Ethernet SSDs can be accessed, such as JBOF/NBOF, NVMe-oF, and Key Value
• How Ethernet-attached SSDs enable composable infrastructures

Register now for what is sure to be an interesting discussion and debate on this technology.

The SNIA Persistent Memory and NVDIMM Special Interest Group announced a programming challenge for NVDIMM-based systems in Q4 of 2019.  Participants get free online access to persistent memory systems based at the SNIA Technology Center using NVDIMM-Ns provided by SIG members AgigA Tech, Intel, SMART Modular, and Supermicro.  The goal of the challenge is to spark interest by developers in this new technology so they can understand more clearly how persistent memory applications can be developed and applied in 2020 environments and beyond.

Response to the NVDIMM Programming Challenge has been very positive.  Entrants to date have backgrounds from no experience programming persistent memory to those who develop persistent memory applications as part of their day jobs.

At the January 2020 Persistent Memory Summit, the SIG announced the first NVDIMM Programming Challenge winner:   Steve Heller of Chrysalis Software Corporation.

Steve submitted a closed-source project, the Three Misses Persistent Hash Table (www.threemisses.com), a key-value store application that uses persistent memory to enable significantly faster start-up and shut-down.  Its use of the DRAM speed of the NVDIMM modules enables faster look-up performance.

Steve's project met the challenge criteria as reviewed by the judges, including the use of multiple aspects of NVDIMM/Persistent Memory capabilities and the use of persistence to enable new features and appeal across multiple aspects of a system beyond persistence.  The Three Misses Persistent Hash Table also advanced the cause of Persistent Memory and applied to all types of NVDIMM/Persistent Memory systems.

Jim Fister, who directs the SNIA Hackathon Program, provided a lively summary of Steve’s winning entry during his talk Introduction to PM Hackathons at the Persistent Memory Summit.  Look for the details about 9 minutes, 30 seconds into the video.  You can watch all of the day’s videos on the SNIA Video Channel PM Summit playlist.

Steve also provided a live demonstration of his work during the day at the Persistent Memory Summit.

SNIA congratulates Steve and reminds you that the NVDIMM Programming Challenge is still LIVE!  Additional participants and submissions are welcome through March 31, 2020, and will be featured at upcoming SNIA events.  Send an email to PMhackathon@snia.org and get your credentials.  Read more about challenge details, and watch this space for future winners, as well as more challenge opportunities!