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!

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!

What’s going on in the world of cloud standards? Since the initial publication of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) definition of cloud computing in NIST SP 800-145 in 2011, international standards development organizations (SDOs) have sought to refine and expand the cloud computing landscape. On February 13, 2020 at our next live SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative webcast “Cloud Standards: What They Are, Why You Should Care” we will dive into the cloud standards worth noting as Eric Hibbard, standards expert and ISO editor, will discuss:

• Key published and draft cloud standards
• Interdependencies of cloud standards and their importance
• Potential future work
• Related technologies: virtualization, federation and fog/edge computing

Lastly, the relevance of the standards will be explored to help organizations understand ways these documents can be exploited.

Register today to join us on February 13, 2020 10:00 am PST for what is sure to be an insightful discussion on the state of cloud standards.

What’s going on in the world of cloud standards? Since the initial publication of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) definition of cloud computing in NIST SP 800-145 in 2011, international standards development organizations (SDOs) have sought to refine and expand the cloud computing landscape. On February 13, 2020 at our next live SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative webcast “Cloud Standards: What They Are, Why You Should Care” we will dive into the cloud standards worth noting as Eric Hibbard, standards expert and ISO editor, will discuss:

• Key published and draft cloud standards
• Interdependencies of cloud standards and their importance
• Potential future work
• Related technologies: virtualization, federation and fog/edge computing

Lastly, the relevance of the standards will be explored to help organizations understand ways these documents can be exploited. Register today to join us on February 13, 2020 10:00 am PST for what is sure to be an insightful discussion on the state of cloud standards.

We kicked-off our 2020 webcast program by diving into how The Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK) fits in the NVMe landscape. Our SPDK experts, Jim Harris and Ben Walker, did an outstanding job presenting on this topic. In fact, their webcast, “Where Does SPDK Fit in the NVMe-oF Landscape” received at 4.9 rating on a scale of 1-5 from the live audience. If you missed the webcast, I highly encourage you to watch it on-demand. We had some great questions from the attendees and here are answers to them all: Q. Which CPU architectures does SPDK support? A. SPDK supports x86, ARM and Power CPU architectures. Q. Are there plans to extend SPDK support to additional architectures? A. If someone has interest in using SPDK on additional architectures, they may develop the necessary SPDK patches and submit them for review.  Please note that SPDK relies on the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) for some aspects of CPU architecture support, so DPDK patches would also be required. Q. Will SPDK NVMe-oF support QUIC?  What advantages does it have compared to RDMA and TCP transports? A. SPDK currently has implementations for all of the transports that are part of the NVMe and related specifications – RDMA, TCP and Fibre Channel (target only).  If NVMe added QUIC (a new UDP-based transport protocol for the Internet) as a new transport, SPDK would likely add support. QUIC could be a more efficient transport than TCP, since it is a reliable transport based on multiplexed connections over UDP. On that note, the SNIA Networking Storage Forum will be hosting a webcast on April 2, 2020. “QUIC – Will it Replace TCP/IP?” You can register for it here. Q. How do I map a locally attached NVMe SSD to an NVMe-oF subsystem? A. Use the bdev_nvme_attach_controller RPC to create SPDK block devices for the NVMe namespaces. You can then attach those block devices to an existing subsystem using the nvmf_subsystem_add_ns RPC. You can find additional details on SPDK nvmf RPCs here. Q. How can I present a regular file as a block device over NVMe-oF?

A. Use the bdev_aio_create RPC to create an SPDK block device for the desired file. You can then attach this block device to an existing subsystem using the nvmf_subsystem_add_ns RPC.  You can find additional details on SPDK nvmf RPCs here.