Last month, the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) hosted a webcast on how increases in networking speeds are impacting storage. If you missed the live webcast, New Landscape of Network Speeds, it’s now available on-demand. We received several interesting questions on this topic. Here are our experts’ answers: Q. What are the cable distances for 2.5 and 5G Ethernet? A. 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T Ethernet are designed to run on existing UTP cabling, so it should reach 100 meters on both Cat5e and Cat6 cabling. Reach of 5GBASE-T on Cat 5e may be less under some conditions, for example if many cables are bundled tightly together. Cabling guidelines and field test equipment are available to aid in the transition. Q. Any comments on why U.2 drives are so rare/uncommon in desktop PC usage? M.2 are very common in laptops, and some desktops, but U.2’s large capacity seems a better fit for desktop. A. M.2 SSDs are more popular for laptops and tablets due to their small form factor and sufficient capacity. U.2 SSDs are used more often in servers, though some desktops and larger laptops also use a U.2 SSD for the larger capacity.   Q. What about using Active Copper cables to get a bit more reach over Passive Copper cables before switching to Active Optical cables? A. Yes active copper cables can provide longer reach than passive copper cables, but you have to look at the expense and power consumption. There may be many cases where using an active optical cable (AOC) will cost the same or less than an active copper cable. Q. For 100Gb/s signaling (future standard) is it expected to work over copper cable (passive or active) or only optical? A. Yes, though the maximum distances will be shorter. With 25Gb/s signaling the maximum copper cable length is 5m. With 50Gb/s signaling the longest copper cables are 3m long. With 100Gb/s we expect the longest copper cables will be about 2m long. Q. So what do you see as the most prevalent LAN speed today and what do you see in next year or two? A. For Ethernet, we see desktops mostly on 1Gb with some moving to 2.5G, 5Gb or 10Gb. Older servers are largely 10Gb but new servers are mostly using 25GbE or 50GbE, while the most demanding servers and fastest flash storage arrays have 100GbE connections. 200GbE will show up in a few servers starting in late 2019, but most 200GbE and 400GbE usage will be for switch-to-switch links during the next few years. In the world of Fibre Channel, most servers today are on 16G FC with a few running 32G and a few of the most demanding servers or fastest flash storage arrays using 64G. 128G FC for now will likely be just for switch-to-switch links. Finally for InfiniBand deployments, older servers are running FDR (56Gb/s) and newer servers are using EDR (100Gb/s). The very newest, fastest HPC and ML/AI servers are starting to use HDR (200Gb/s) InfiniBand. If you’re new to SNIA NSF, we encourage you to check out the SNIA NSF webcast library. There you’ll find more than 60 educational, vendor-neutral on-demand webcasts produced by SNIA experts.  

Video streaming is an easy-to-understand workload from the I/O perspective, right?  It’s pretty obvious that it’s a workload heavy on long, streaming reads. The application can be modeled with a consistent read flow, and the software tests should be easy.  However, an analysis of the real-world workload shows something very different. At the disk level, the reads turn out to be a rapid flow of 4k and 8k block reads from a solid-state-disk.  Further, other processes on the system also add in a small amount of 4k and 8k writes in the midst of the reads. All of this impacts the application --and an SSD -- which was likely heavily tested on the basis of long, streaming reads. Understanding the real-world characteristics of a workload can be a significant advantage in the development of new hardware, new systems, and new applications.   The SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) and SSSI member company Calypso Systems are providing an opportunity to build a repository of workloads for the industry to use for real-world testing, as outlined in a new SSSI white paper How to Be a Part of the Real-World Workload Revolution. This paper is also available in Chinese at the SSSI Knowledge Center White Papers page. By going to the TestMyWorkload site, anyone can participate by providing a trace capture of an I/O workload that can be used by others to develop better products. The capture itself traces the block transfers, but does not capture actual data.  Any workload replay would use representative blocks, so there are no concerns about data security or integrity from these captures. The repository can be used by any participant to test hardware and software, and can help system vendors and users optimize configurations for the best performance based on real-world data.  By participating in this effort, organizations and individuals can provide insight and gain from the knowledge of all the contributors. Follow these three steps to be a part of the revolution today! 1.  Read the white paper. 2.  Download the free capture tools at TestMyWorkload.com. 3. Mark your calendar and register HERE to learn more in the free SNIA webcast How to Be a Part of the Real-World Workload Revolution on July 9 at 11:00 am Pacific/2:00 pm Eastern.

Video streaming is an easy-to-understand workload from the I/O perspective, right?  It’s pretty obvious that it’s a workload heavy on long, streaming reads. The application can be modeled with a consistent read flow, and the software tests should be easy.  However, an analysis of the real-world workload shows something very different. At the disk level, the reads turn out to be a rapid flow of 4k and 8k block reads from a solid-state-disk.  Further, other processes on the system also add in a small amount of 4k and 8k writes in the midst of the reads. All of this impacts the application –and an SSD — which was likely heavily tested on the basis of long, streaming reads.

Understanding the real-world characteristics of a workload can be a significant advantage in the development of new hardware, new systems, and new applications.   The SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) and SSSI member company Calypso Systems are providing an opportunity to build a repository of workloads for the industry to use for real-world testing, as outlined in a new SSSI white paper How to Be a Part of the Real-World Workload Revolution. This paper is also available in Chinese at the SSSI Knowledge Center White Papers page.

By going to the TestMyWorkload site, anyone can participate by providing a trace capture of an I/O workload that can be used by others to develop better products. The capture itself traces the block transfers, but does not capture actual data.  Any workload replay would use representative blocks, so there are no concerns about data security or integrity from these captures.

The repository can be used by any participant to test hardware and software, and can help system vendors and users optimize configurations for the best performance based on real-world data.  By participating in this effort, organizations and individuals can provide insight and gain from the knowledge of all the contributors.

Follow these three steps to be a part of the revolution today!

1.  Read the white paper.

2.  Download the free capture tools at TestMyWorkload.com.

3. Mark your calendar and register HERE to learn more in the free SNIA webcast How to Be a Part of the Real-World Workload Revolution on July 9 at 11:00 am Pacific/2:00 pm Eastern.

Video streaming is an easy-to-understand workload from the I/O perspective, right?  It’s pretty obvious that it’s a workload heavy on long, streaming reads. The application can be modeled with a consistent read flow, and the software tests should be easy.  However, an analysis of the real-world workload shows something very different. At the disk level, the reads turn out to be a rapid flow of 4k and 8k block reads from a solid-state-disk.  Further, other processes on the system also add in a small amount of 4k and 8k writes in the midst of the reads. All of this impacts the application –and an SSD — which was likely heavily tested on the basis of long, streaming reads. Understanding the real-world characteristics of a workload can be a significant advantage in the development of new hardware, new systems, and new applications.   The SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) and SSSI member company Calypso Systems are providing an opportunity to build a repository of workloads for the industry to use for real-world testing, as outlined in a new SSSI white paper How to Be a Part of the Real-World Workload Revolution. By going to the TestMyWorkload site, anyone can participate by providing a trace capture of an I/O workload that can be used by others to develop better products. The capture itself traces the block transfers, but does not capture actual data.  Any workload replay would use representative blocks, so there are no concerns about data security or integrity from these captures. The repository can be used by any participant to test hardware and software, and can help system vendors and users optimize configurations for the best performance based on real-world data.  By participating in this effort, organizations and individuals can provide insight and gain from the knowledge of all the contributors. Follow these three steps to be a part of the revolution today! 1.  Read the white paper. 2.  Download the free capture tools at TestMyWorkload.com. 3. Mark your calendar and register HERE to learn more in the free SNIA webcast How to Be a Part of the Real-World Workload Revolution on July 9 at 11:00 am Pacific/2:00 pm Eastern.

As enterprises move to a hybrid multi-cloud world, they are faced with many challenges. In addition to decisions surrounding what technologies to use, they are also seeing a transformation in traditional IT roles. Storage admins are asked to be more cloud savvy while new roles of cloud admins are emerging to handle the complexities of deploying simple and efficient clouds. Meanwhile, both these roles are asked to ensure a self-service environment is architected so that application developers can get resources needed to develop cutting edge apps not in week, days or hours but in minutes.

That’s why the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) is hosting another live webcast on Kubernetes in the Cloud (Part 2) on July 17, 2019. In part one of this three part series, we covered the high level aspects of Kubernetes. This presentation will discus key capabilities IT vendors are creating based on open source technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes to build self-service infrastructure to support hybrid multi-cloud deployments. We’ll cover:

• Persistent storage and how to specify it
• Ensuring application portability between Private and Public Clouds
• Building a self-service infrastructure (Helm, Operators)
• Selecting Block, File, Object (Traditional Storage, SDS)

Register today to save your spot. And bring your questions, our experts will be on hand to answer them on the spot.

As enterprises move to a hybrid multi-cloud world, they are faced with many challenges. In addition to decisions surrounding what technologies to use, they are also seeing a transformation in traditional IT roles. Storage admins are asked to be more cloud savvy while new roles of cloud admins are emerging to handle the complexities of deploying simple and efficient clouds. Meanwhile, both these roles are asked to ensure a self-service environment is architected so that application developers can get resources needed to develop cutting edge apps not in week, days or hours but in minutes.

That’s why the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) is hosting another live webcast on Kubernetes in the Cloud (Part 2) on July 17, 2019. In part one of this three part series, we covered the high level aspects of Kubernetes. This presentation will discus key capabilities IT vendors are creating based on open source technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes to build self-service infrastructure to support hybrid multi-cloud deployments. We’ll cover:

• Persistent storage and how to specify it
• Ensuring application portability between Private and Public Clouds
• Building a self-service infrastructure (Helm, Operators)
• Selecting Block, File, Object (Traditional Storage, SDS)

Register today to save your spot. And bring your questions, our experts will be on hand to answer them on the spot.

As enterprises move to a hybrid multi-cloud world, they are faced with many challenges. In addition to decisions surrounding what technologies to use, they are also seeing a transformation in traditional IT roles. Storage admins are asked to be more cloud savvy while new roles of cloud admins are emerging to handle the complexities of deploying simple and efficient clouds. Meanwhile, both these roles are asked to ensure a self-service environment is architected so that application developers can get resources needed to develop cutting edge apps not in week, days or hours but in minutes. That’s why the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) is hosting another live webcast on Kubernetes in the Cloud (Part 2) on July 17, 2019. In part one of this three part series, we covered the high level aspects of Kubernetes. This presentation will discus key capabilities IT vendors are creating based on open source technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes to build self-service infrastructure to support hybrid multi-cloud deployments. We’ll cover:

• Persistent storage and how to specify it
• Ensuring application portability between Private and Public Clouds
• Building a self-service infrastructure (Helm, Operators)
• Selecting Block, File, Object (Traditional Storage, SDS)

Register today to save your spot. And bring your questions, our experts will be on hand to answer them on the spot.

By 2025, IDC says worldwide data will grow 61% to 175 zettabytes, with as much of the data residing in the cloud as in data centers. A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes. Now multiply that 175 times. It’s mind boggling. And with the explosion in data, IDC states that businesses are looking to centralize data management and delivery, as well as to leverage data to control their businesses and the user experience.

The Storage Management Initiative (SMI) is a SNIA group that helps unify the storage industry to develop and standardize interoperable storage management technologies for today’s IT environments and next generation data centers. It supports the development of storage management solutions based upon standard interfaces instead of proprietary interfaces. Standard storage interfaces lower costs, make integration efforts easier and provide increased reliability, security and manageability.

SNIA Swordfish™

The SNIA Scalable Storage Management Technical Work Group (SSM TWG) developed SNIA Swordfish™, a standard that defines the management of data storage and services as an extension to the DMTF Redfish® specification, which uses JSON and OData to create an easy-to-use RESTful API. Swordfish was designed with IT administrators and DevOps engineers in mind, to provide simplified and scalable storage management for data center environments. Unlike proprietary interfaces, Swordfish is an open standard and has been developed with broad industry support, including some of the leading companies in the storage industry.

Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) and pywbem

For storage equipment vendors, management software vendors and end-users seeking to address the day-to-day tasks of the IT environment, the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) is an ISO-approved international standard. It’s currently implemented in over 1,500 products that provide access to common storage management functions and features. Unlike proprietary management interfaces, using a standard interface allows management applications to support a wider range of storage equipment from multiple vendors.

For software developers and system administrators using the SMI-S specification, SMI also supports pywbem. Pywbem is an open source library written in Python that supports the quick and efficient development of higher-level interfaces to storage management services such as discovery, security, monitoring, performance, fault reporting and active management. It’s simple to use, easy to integrate into the SMI-S environment and also compliant with the Common Information Model (CIM) and Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) standards defined by the DMTF.

SNIA Swordfish and SMI-S

Although Swordfish and SMI-S are both supported by the SMI, industry needs are shifting from SMI-S to Swordfish. SMI-S is a mature standard based upon DMTF CIM and CIM-XML that defines a Client/Server API and favors an equipment-oriented management approach for networked storage. Swordfish is a newer SNIA standard based upon DMTF Redfish that defines an easy-to-use RESTful API. Swordfish manages block storage, file storage and storage services, supporting unified server, storage and network management in converged, hyper-converged, hyperscale and cloud infrastructure environments that demand a high degree of scalability.

Storage Management Lab

SMI makes the Storage Management Lab (SM Lab) program available to its members. This helps accelerate the implementation of SMI-S- and Swordfish-based client and provider products. Vendors are encouraged to place and maintain equipment in SM Lab at the SNIA Technology Center for both local and remote use by all SM Lab members. Equipment in SM Lab is accessible remotely via VPN, providing shared open access to all SM Lab members for ongoing testing.

Plugfest events are held multiple times each year, enabling engineers from SM Lab members to collaborate face-to-face with each other on interoperability testing, and this helps accelerate the development of interoperable implementations. Presentations given at plugfest events cover topics of primary interest to implementers, including product overviews, software tools, Swordfish, Pegasus, pywbem, security, and more.

Conformance Testing Program

The SMI-S Conformance Testing Program (CTP) is also supported by the SMI. Test results shown on the public CTP website provide verification that a vendor’s product has passed basic interoperability hurdles. Vendors can then promote their products as having passed the official SMI-S CTP test suite. This vendor independent, industry-vetted validation of conformance to the SMI-S standard reduces the cost of ownership, improves interoperability, and helps prevent vendor lock-in. A similar SNIA Swordfish CTP offering is being developed in the second half of 2019.

Education

The SMI strives to educate the industry about storage management technologies to help IT administrators and DevOps engineers better address their storage management needs. This is done through Swordfish School videos, presentations at industry conferences, published articles, blogs, ongoing webcasts, social media posts and news items. Online developer groups associated with SMI-S and Swordfish are also supported by the SMI and its members.

As the amount of data rapidly grows, the effects of this abundance have become a costly and difficult proposition for organizations worldwide. In order to reduce some of those costs and improve the storage management capabilities of storage solutions, SNIA and the SMI will continue to work towards establishing industry standards that help.

Visit https://www.snia.org/technology-focus/storage-management for more information on the important work SNIA is doing in storage management.

By 2025, IDC says worldwide data will grow 61% to 175 zettabytes, with as much of the data residing in the cloud as in data centers. A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes. Now multiply that 175 times. It’s mind boggling. And with the explosion in data, IDC states that businesses are looking to centralize data management and delivery, as well as to leverage data to control their businesses and the user experience.

The Storage Management Initiative (SMI) is a SNIA group that helps unify the storage industry to develop and standardize interoperable storage management technologies for today’s IT environments and next generation data centers. It supports the development of storage management solutions based upon standard interfaces instead of proprietary interfaces.  Standard storage interfaces lower costs, make integration efforts easier and provide increased reliability, security and manageability.

 SNIA Swordfish

 The SNIA Scalable Storage Management Technical Work Group (SSM TWG) developed SNIA Swordfish, a standard that defines the management of data storage and services as an extension to the DMTF Redfish® specification, which uses JSON and OData to create an easy-to-use RESTful API.  Swordfish was designed with IT administrators and DevOps engineers in mind, to provide simplified and scalable storage management for data center environments. Unlike proprietary interfaces, Swordfish is an open standard and has been developed with broad industry support, including some of the leading companies in the storage industry.

Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) and pywbem

 For storage equipment vendors, management software vendors and end-users seeking to address the day-to-day tasks of the IT environment, the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) is an ISO-approved international standard. It’s currently implemented in over 1,500 products that provide access to common storage management functions and features. Unlike proprietary management interfaces, using a standard interface allows management applications to support a wider range of storage equipment from multiple vendors.

For software developers and system administrators using the SMI-S specification, SMI also supports pywbem. Pywbem is an open source library written in Python that supports the quick and efficient development of higher-level interfaces to storage management services such as discovery, security, monitoring, performance, fault reporting and active management. It’s simple to use, easy to integrate into the SMI-S environment and also compliant with the Common Information Model (CIM) and Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) standards defined by the DMTF.

SNIA Swordfish and SMI-S

Although Swordfish and SMI-S are both supported by the SMI, industry needs are shifting from SMI-S to Swordfish.  SMI-S is a mature standard based upon DMTF CIM and CIM-XML that defines a Client/Server API and favors an equipment-oriented management approach for networked storage.  Swordfish is a newer SNIA standard based upon DMTF Redfish that defines an easy-to-use RESTful API. Swordfish manages block storage, file storage and storage services, supporting unified server, storage and network management in converged, hyper-converged, hyperscale and cloud infrastructure environments that demand a high degree of scalability.

Storage Management Lab

SMI makes the Storage Management Lab (SM Lab) program available to its members. This helps accelerate the implementation of SMI-S- and Swordfish-based client and provider products. Vendors are encouraged to place and maintain equipment in SM Lab at the SNIA Technology Center for both local and remote use by all SM Lab members. Equipment in SM Lab is accessible remotely via VPN, providing shared open access to all SM Lab members for ongoing testing.

Plugfest events are held multiple times each year, enabling engineers from SM Lab members to collaborate face-to-face with each other on interoperability testing, and this helps accelerate the development of interoperable implementations. Presentations given at plugfest events cover topics of primary interest to implementers, including product overviews, software tools, Swordfish, Pegasus, pywbem, security, and more.

Conformance Testing Program

The SMI-S Conformance Testing Program (CTP) is also supported by the SMI. Test results shown on the public CTP website provide verification that a vendor’s product has passed basic interoperability hurdles. Vendors can then promote their products as having passed the official SMI-S CTP test suite. This vendor independent, industry-vetted validation of conformance to the SMI-S standard reduces the cost of ownership, improves interoperability, and helps prevent vendor lock-in. A similar SNIA Swordfish CTP offering is being developed in the second half of 2019.

Education

The SMI strives to educate the industry about storage management technologies to help IT administrators and DevOps engineers better address their storage management needs. This is done through Swordfish School videos, presentations at industry conferences, published articles, blogs, ongoing webcasts, social media posts and news items. Online developer groups associated with SMI-S and Swordfish are also supported by the SMI and its members.

As the amount of data rapidly grows, the effects of this abundance have become a costly and difficult proposition for organizations worldwide. In order to reduce some of those costs and improve the storage management capabilities of storage solutions, SNIA and the SMI will continue to work towards establishing industry standards that help.

Visit https://www.snia.org/technology-focus/storage-management for more information on the important work SNIA is doing in storage management.

By 2025, IDC says worldwide data will grow 61% to 175 zettabytes, with as much of the data residing in the cloud as in data centers. A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes. Now multiply that 175 times. It’s mind boggling. And with the explosion in data, IDC states that businesses are looking to centralize data management and delivery, as well as to leverage data to control their businesses and the user experience. The Storage Management Initiative (SMI) is a SNIA group that helps unify the storage industry to develop and standardize interoperable storage management technologies for today’s IT environments and next generation data centers. It supports the development of storage management solutions based upon standard interfaces instead of proprietary interfaces.  Standard storage interfaces lower costs, make integration efforts easier and provide increased reliability, security and manageability.

 SNIA Swordfish

 The SNIA Scalable Storage Management Technical Work Group (SSM TWG) developed SNIA Swordfish, a standard that defines the management of data storage and services as an extension to the DMTF Redfish® specification, which uses JSON and OData to create an easy-to-use RESTful API.  Swordfish was designed with IT administrators and DevOps engineers in mind, to provide simplified and scalable storage management for data center environments. Unlike proprietary interfaces, Swordfish is an open standard and has been developed with broad industry support, including some of the leading companies in the storage industry.

Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) and pywbem

 For storage equipment vendors, management software vendors and end-users seeking to address the day-to-day tasks of the IT environment, the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) is an ISO-approved international standard. It’s currently implemented in over 1,500 products that provide access to common storage management functions and features. Unlike proprietary management interfaces, using a standard interface allows management applications to support a wider range of storage equipment from multiple vendors. For software developers and system administrators using the SMI-S specification, SMI also supports pywbem. Pywbem is an open source library written in Python that supports the quick and efficient development of higher-level interfaces to storage management services such as discovery, security, monitoring, performance, fault reporting and active management. It’s simple to use, easy to integrate into the SMI-S environment and also compliant with the Common Information Model (CIM) and Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) standards defined by the DMTF.

SNIA Swordfish and SMI-S

Although Swordfish and SMI-S are both supported by the SMI, industry needs are shifting from SMI-S to Swordfish.  SMI-S is a mature standard based upon DMTF CIM and CIM-XML that defines a Client/Server API and favors an equipment-oriented management approach for networked storage.  Swordfish is a newer SNIA standard based upon DMTF Redfish that defines an easy-to-use RESTful API. Swordfish manages block storage, file storage and storage services, supporting unified server, storage and network management in converged, hyper-converged, hyperscale and cloud infrastructure environments that demand a high degree of scalability.

Storage Management Lab

SMI makes the Storage Management Lab (SM Lab) program available to its members. This helps accelerate the implementation of SMI-S- and Swordfish-based client and provider products. Vendors are encouraged to place and maintain equipment in SM Lab at the SNIA Technology Center for both local and remote use by all SM Lab members. Equipment in SM Lab is accessible remotely via VPN, providing shared open access to all SM Lab members for ongoing testing. Plugfest events are held multiple times each year, enabling engineers from SM Lab members to collaborate face-to-face with each other on interoperability testing, and this helps accelerate the development of interoperable implementations. Presentations given at plugfest events cover topics of primary interest to implementers, including product overviews, software tools, Swordfish, Pegasus, pywbem, security, and more.

Conformance Testing Program

The SMI-S Conformance Testing Program (CTP) is also supported by the SMI. Test results shown on the public CTP website provide verification that a vendor’s product has passed basic interoperability hurdles. Vendors can then promote their products as having passed the official SMI-S CTP test suite. This vendor independent, industry-vetted validation of conformance to the SMI-S standard reduces the cost of ownership, improves interoperability, and helps prevent vendor lock-in. A similar SNIA Swordfish CTP offering is being developed in the second half of 2019.

Education

The SMI strives to educate the industry about storage management technologies to help IT administrators and DevOps engineers better address their storage management needs. This is done through Swordfish School videos, presentations at industry conferences, published articles, blogs, ongoing webcasts, social media posts and news items. Online developer groups associated with SMI-S and Swordfish are also supported by the SMI and its members. As the amount of data rapidly grows, the effects of this abundance have become a costly and difficult proposition for organizations worldwide. In order to reduce some of those costs and improve the storage management capabilities of storage solutions, SNIA and the SMI will continue to work towards establishing industry standards that help. Visit https://www.snia.org/technology-focus/storage-management for more information on the important work SNIA is doing in storage management.