Cloud data centers are by definition very dynamic. The need for infrastructure availability in the right place at the right time for the right use case is not as predictable, nor as static, as it has been in traditional data centers. These cloud data centers need to rapidly construct virtual pools of compute, network and storage based on the needs of particular customers or applications, then have those resources dynamically and automatically flex as needs change. To accomplish this, many in the industry espouse composable infrastructure capabilities, which rely on heterogeneous resources with specific capabilities that can be discovered, managed, and automatically provisioned and re-provisioned through data center orchestration tools. The primary benefit of composable infrastructure results in a smaller grained sets of resources that are independently scalable and can be brought together as required. On February 13, 2019, The SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative is going to examine what’s happening with composable infrastructure in our live webcast, Why Composable Infrastructure? In this webcast, SNIA experts will discuss:

• What prompted the development of composable infrastructure?
• What is composable infrastructure?
• What are the enabling technologies and potential solutions
• Enabling technologies (not just what’s here, but what’s needed…)
• An update on the current status of composable infrastructure standards/products, and where we might be in two to five years

Our goal is to clearly explain the reasoning behind and the benefits of composable infrastructure in an educational, vendor-neutral way. We hope you’ll join us. Our experts will be on hand to answer your questions. Register today to save your spot.

With a topic like Emerging Memory Poised to Explode, no wonder this SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative webcast generated so much interest!  Our audience had some great questions, and, as promised, our experts Tom Coughlin and Jim Handy provide the answers in this blog. Read on, and join SNIA at the Persistent Memory Summit January 24, 2019 in Santa Clara CA.  Details and complimentary registration are at www.snia.org/pm-summit. Q. Can you mention one or two key applications leading the effort to leverage Persistent Memory? A. Right now the main applications for Persistent Memory are in Storage Area Networks (SANs), where NVDIMM-Ns (Non-Volatile Dual In-line Memory Modules) are being used for journaling.  SAP HANA, SQLserver, Apache Ignite, Oracle RDBMS, eXtremeDB, Aerospike, and other in-memory databases are undergoing early deployment with NVDIMM-N and with Intel’s Optane DIMMs in hyperscale datacenters.  IBM is using Everspin Magnetoresistive Random-Access Memory (MRAM) chips for higher-speed functions (write cache, data buffer, streams, journaling, and logs) in certain Solid State Drives (SSDs), following a lead taken by Mangstor.  Everspin’s STT MRAM DIMM is also seeing some success, but the company’s not disclosing a lot of specifics. Q. I believe that anyone who can ditch the batteries for NVDIMM support will happily pay a mark-up on 3DXP DIMMs should Micron offer them. A: Perhaps that’s true.  I think that Micron, though, is looking for higher-volume applications.  Micron is well aware of the size of the NVDIMM-N market, since the company is an important NVDIMM supplier.  Everspin is probably also working on this opportunity, since its STT MRAM DIMM is similar, although at a significantly higher price than Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM). Volume is the key to more applications for 3DXPoint DIMMs and any other memory technology.  It may be that the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications will help drive the greater use of many of these fast Non-Volatile Memories. Q.  Any comments on HPE's Memristor? A: HPE went very silent on the Memristor at about the same time that the 3D XPoint Memory was introduced.  The company explained in 2016 that the first generation of “The Machine” would use DRAM instead of the Memristor.  This leads us to suspect that 3D XPoint turned some heads at HPE.  One likely explanation is that HPE by itself would have a very difficult time reaching the scale required to bring the Memristor’s cost to the necessary level to justify its use. Q. Do you expect NVDIMM-N will co-exist into the future with other storage class memories because of its speed and essentially unlimited endurance of DRAM? A: Yes.  The NVDIMM-N should continue to appeal to certain applications, especially those that value its technical attributes enough to offset its higher-than-DRAM price. Q. What are Write/Erase endurance limitations of PCM and STT? (vis a vis DRAM's infinite endurance)? A: Intel and Micron have never publicly disclosed their endurance figures for 3D XPoint, although Jim Handy has backed out numbers in his Memory Guy blog (http://TheMemoryGuy.com/examining-3d-xpoints-1000-times-endurance-benefit/).  His calculations indicate an endurance of more than 30K erase/write cycles, but the number could be significantly lower than this since SSD controllers do a good job of reducing the number of writes that the memory chip actually sees.  There’s an SSD guy series on this: http://thessdguy.com/how-controllers-maximize-ssd-life/, also available as a SNIA SSSI TechNote.   Everspin’s EMD3D256M STT MRAM specification lists an endurance of 10^10 cycles. Q. Your thoughts on Nanotube RAM (NRAM)? A: Although the nanotube memory is very interesting it is only one member in a sea of contenders for the Persistent Memory crown.  It’s very difficult to project the outcome of a device that’s not already in volume production. Q. Will Micron commercialize 3D XPoint? I do not see them in the market as much as Intel on Optane. A: Micron needs a clear path to profitability to rationalize entering the 3D XPoint market whereas Intel can justify losing money on the technology.  Learn why in an upcoming post on The Memory Guy blog. Thanks again to the bearded duo and their moderator, Alex McDonald, SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative Co-Chair!  Bookmark the SNIA Brighttalk webcast link for more great webcasts in 2019!

With a topic like Emerging Memory Poised to Explode, no wonder this SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative webcast generated so much interest!  Our audience had some great questions, and, as promised, our experts Tom Coughlin and Jim Handy provide the answers in this blog. Read on, and join SNIA at the Persistent Memory Summit January 24, 2019 in Santa Clara CA.  Details and complimentary registration are at www.snia.org/pm-summit. Q. Can you mention one or two key applications leading the effort to leverage Persistent Memory? A. Right now the main applications for Persistent Memory are in Storage Area Networks (SANs), where NVDIMM-Ns (Non-Volatile Dual In-line Memory Modules) are being used for journaling.  SAP HANA, SQLserver, Apache Ignite, Oracle RDBMS, eXtremeDB, Aerospike, and other in-memory databases are undergoing early deployment with NVDIMM-N and with Intel’s Optane DIMMs in hyperscale datacenters.  IBM is using Everspin Magnetoresistive Random-Access Memory (MRAM) chips for higher-speed functions (write cache, data buffer, streams, journaling, and logs) in certain Solid State Drives (SSDs), following a lead taken by Mangstor.  Everspin’s STT MRAM DIMM is also seeing some success, but the company’s not disclosing a lot of specifics. Q. I believe that anyone who can ditch the batteries for NVDIMM support will happily pay a mark-up on 3DXP DIMMs should Micron offer them. A: Perhaps that’s true.  I think that Micron, though, is looking for higher-volume applications.  Micron is well aware of the size of the NVDIMM-N market, since the company is an important NVDIMM supplier.  Everspin is probably also working on this opportunity, since its STT MRAM DIMM is similar, although at a significantly higher price than Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM). Volume is the key to more applications for 3DXPoint DIMMs and any other memory technology.  It may be that the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications will help drive the greater use of many of these fast Non-Volatile Memories. Q.  Any comments on HPE’s Memristor? A: HPE went very silent on the Memristor at about the same time that the 3D XPoint Memory was introduced.  The company explained in 2016 that the first generation of “The Machine” would use DRAM instead of the Memristor.  This leads us to suspect that 3D XPoint turned some heads at HPE.  One likely explanation is that HPE by itself would have a very difficult time reaching the scale required to bring the Memristor’s cost to the necessary level to justify its use. Q. Do you expect NVDIMM-N will co-exist into the future with other storage class memories because of its speed and essentially unlimited endurance of DRAM? A: Yes.  The NVDIMM-N should continue to appeal to certain applications, especially those that value its technical attributes enough to offset its higher-than-DRAM price. Q. What are Write/Erase endurance limitations of PCM and STT? (vis a vis DRAM’s infinite endurance)? A: Intel and Micron have never publicly disclosed their endurance figures for 3D XPoint, although Jim Handy has backed out numbers in his Memory Guy blog (http://TheMemoryGuy.com/examining-3d-xpoints-1000-times-endurance-benefit/).  His calculations indicate an endurance of more than 30K erase/write cycles, but the number could be significantly lower than this since SSD controllers do a good job of reducing the number of writes that the memory chip actually sees.  There’s an SSD guy series on this: http://thessdguy.com/how-controllers-maximize-ssd-life/, also available as a SNIA SSSI TechNote.   Everspin’s EMD3D256M STT MRAM specification lists an endurance of 10^10 cycles. Q. Your thoughts on Nanotube RAM (NRAM)? A: Although the nanotube memory is very interesting it is only one member in a sea of contenders for the Persistent Memory crown.  It’s very difficult to project the outcome of a device that’s not already in volume production. Q. Will Micron commercialize 3D XPoint? I do not see them in the market as much as Intel on Optane. A: Micron needs a clear path to profitability to rationalize entering the 3D XPoint market whereas Intel can justify losing money on the technology.  Learn why in an upcoming post on The Memory Guy blog. Thanks again to the bearded duo and their moderator, Alex McDonald, SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative Co-Chair!  Bookmark the SNIA Brighttalk webcast link for more great webcasts in 2019!

"Why can't I add a 33^rd node?" One of the great advantages of Hyperconverged infrastructures (also known as "HCI") is that, relatively speaking, they are extremely easy to set up and manage. In many ways, they're the "Happy Meals" of infrastructure, because you have compute and storage in the same box. All you need to do is add networking. In practice, though, many consumers of HCI have found that the "add networking" part isn't quite as much of a no-brainer as they thought it would be. Because HCI hides a great deal of the "back end" communication, it's possible to severely underestimate or misunderstand the requirements necessary to run a seamless environment. At some point, "just add more nodes" becomes a more difficult proposition. That's why the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) is hosting a live webcast "Networking Requirements for Hyperconvergence" on February 5, 2019. At this webcast, we're going to take a look behind the scenes, peek behind the GUI, so to speak. We'll be talking about what goes on back there, and shine the light behind the bezels to see:

• The impact of metadata on the network
• What happens as we add additional nodes
• How to right-size the network for growth
• Networking best practices to make your HCI work better
• And more...

Now, not all HCI environments are created equal, so we'll say in advance that your mileage will vary. However, understanding some basic concepts of how storage networking impacts HCI performance may be particularly useful when planning your HCI environment, or contemplating whether or not it is appropriate for your situation in the first place. Register here to save your spot for February 5^th. Our experts will be on hand to answer your questions. This webcast is the second installment of our Storage Networking series. Our first was "Networking Requirements for Ethernet Scale-Out Storage." It's available on-demand as are all our educational webcasts. I encourage you to peruse the more than 60 vendor-neutral presentations is the NSF webcast library at your convenience.

“Why can’t I add a 33^rd node?” One of the great advantages of Hyperconverged infrastructures (also known as “HCI”) is that, relatively speaking, they are extremely easy to set up and manage. In many ways, they’re the “Happy Meals” of infrastructure, because you have compute and storage in the same box. All you need to do is add networking. In practice, though, many consumers of HCI have found that the “add networking” part isn’t quite as much of a no-brainer as they thought it would be. Because HCI hides a great deal of the “back end” communication, it’s possible to severely underestimate or misunderstand the requirements necessary to run a seamless environment. At some point, “just add more nodes” becomes a more difficult proposition. That’s why the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) is hosting a live webcast “Networking Requirements for Hyperconvergence” on February 5, 2019. At this webcast, we’re going to take a look behind the scenes, peek behind the GUI, so to speak. We’ll be talking about what goes on back there, and shine the light behind the bezels to see:

• The impact of metadata on the network
• What happens as we add additional nodes
• How to right-size the network for growth
• Networking best practices to make your HCI work better
• And more…

Now, not all HCI environments are created equal, so we’ll say in advance that your mileage will vary. However, understanding some basic concepts of how storage networking impacts HCI performance may be particularly useful when planning your HCI environment, or contemplating whether or not it is appropriate for your situation in the first place. Register here to save your spot for February 5^th. Our experts will be on hand to answer your questions. This webcast is the second installment of our Storage Networking series. Our first was “Networking Requirements for Ethernet Scale-Out Storage.” It’s available on-demand as are all our educational webcasts. I encourage you to peruse the more than 60 vendor-neutral presentations is the NSF webcast library at your convenience.

Don't miss your chance to attend the SNIA's 7th Annual Persistent Memory Summit, co-located with the SNIA Annual Members’ Meeting on January 24, 2019 at a new location – Hyatt Regency Santa Clara CA.  This innovative one-day event brings together industry leaders, solution providers, and users of technology to understand the ecosystem driving system memory and storage into a single, unified “persistent memory” entity. Agenda topics include Enabling Persistent Memory through the Operating System and Interpreted Languages; PM Solutions, Interfaces, and Media; and the NVM Programming Model in the Real World.  The final agenda will be live later this month so stay tuned! Many thanks to SNIA member Intel Corporation and the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative for underwriting the Summit.  New to the Summit in 2019 is an evening networking reception and a new, expanded demonstration area. Gold and Demonstration sponsor opportunities are now available.  Complimentary registration is now open - visit www.snia.org/pm-summit to sign up, check out videos of 2018 sessions, and learn how to showcase your PM solutions at the event.

Don’t miss your chance to attend the SNIA’s 7th Annual Persistent Memory Summit, co-located with the SNIA Annual Members’ Meeting on January 24, 2019 at a new location – Hyatt Regency Santa Clara CA.  This innovative one-day event brings together industry leaders, solution providers, and users of technology to understand the ecosystem driving system memory and storage into a single, unified “persistent memory” entity. Agenda topics include Enabling Persistent Memory through the Operating System and Interpreted Languages; PM Solutions, Interfaces, and Media; and the NVM Programming Model in the Real World.  The final agenda will be live later this month so stay tuned!

Many thanks to SNIA member Intel Corporation and the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative for underwriting the Summit.  New to the Summit in 2019 is an evening networking reception and a new, expanded demonstration area. Gold and Demonstration sponsor opportunities are now available.  Complimentary registration is now open – visit www.snia.org/pm-summit to sign up, check out videos of 2018 sessions, and learn how to showcase your PM solutions at the event.

In the storage world, NVMe is arguably the hottest thing going right now. Go to any storage conference – either vendor-related or vendor-neutral, and you’ll see NVMe as the latest and greatest innovation. It stands to reason, then, that when you want to run NVMe over a network, you must understand NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF). Meanwhile, TCP is by far the most popular networking transport protocol both for storage and non-storage traffic. TCP – the long-standing mainstay of networking – is the newest transport technology to be approved by the NVM Express® organization, enabling NVMe/TCP. This can mean really good things for storage and storage networking – but what are the tradeoffs? With any new technology, though, there can still be a bit of confusion. No technology is a panacea; and with any new development there will always be a need to gauge where it is best used (like a tool in a toolbox). Learn more on January 22^nd when the SNIA Networking Storage Forum hosts a live webcast, What NVMe/TCP Means for Networked Storage. In this webcast, we’ve brought together the lead author of the NVMe/TCP specification, Sagi Grimberg, and J. Metz, member of the SNIA and NVMe Boards of Directors, to discuss:

• What is NVMe/TCP
• How NVMe/TCP works
• What are the trade-offs?
• What should network administrators know?
• What kind of expectations are realistic?
• What technologies can make NVMe/TCP work better?
• And more…

Obviously, we can’t cover the entire world of NVMe and TCP networking in an hour, but we can start to raise the questions – and approach the answers – that must be addressed in order to make informed decisions. Speaking of questions, bring yours. Sagi and J. will be answering them on the 22^nd. Register today to save your spot.    

Whether you’re a software provider or a hardware vendor, it’s a good time to check out the latest updates to the Storage Networking Industry Association’s (SNIA’s) Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) standard. The latest version SMI-S 1.8 v3 is now a SNIA Technical Position that meets your current needs and offers enticing new enhancements for you and your potential new customers. This version will also be sent to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for approval, making it a valuable asset worldwide if accepted.

“IT system administrators who demand a choice in storage vendors and infrastructure while ensuring advanced feature enablement through interoperability, have long benefitted from SMI-S,” says Don Deel, chairman, SMI Technical Work Group and SMI Governing Board. “The standard streamlines storage management functions and features into a common set of tools that address the day-to-day tasks of the IT environment.”

Since it was first defined, SMI-S has been continuously updated with new storage management functionality and is now incorporated into over 1,000 storage products. Version 1.5 of the specification received approval by ISO and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in 2015 and is designated as ISO/IEC 24775.

SMI-S 1.8 v3 represents a significant effort to update the standard. The new version includes a number of editorial changes, clarifications and corrections. It also contains functional enhancements such as new indications, methods, properties and profiles.

Users of SMI-S are being urged to move directly to SMI-S 1.8 v3 since v1.6.1 was the last version that was officially tested. In preparation for submission to ISO, SMI-S 1.8 v3 has been thoroughly reviewed and a number of corrections have been incorporated.

The SMI-S specification is divided into six books which cover the autonomous profiles and component profiles used to manage storage physical and virtual storage area network equipment.

The main new functions since 1.6.1 are in SMI-S 1.8 v3, summarized as follows:

• Fabric Book (Fabric and Switch)
  • Peer zoning enhancements
  • Enhancements to port speed
• Block Book
  • New indications for component health and space management
  • Storage Pool Diagnostics
  • New method in Block Services
  • New methods in Group Masking and Mapping
  • Enhancements to Replication Services
  • New method in Volume Composition
  • Advanced Metrics in Block Server Performance
• Common Profiles Book
  • New profile for WBEM Server Management
  • New method in iSCSI Target Ports Profile
• Host Book
  • New profiles for memory configuration
• Filesystem Book
  • New indications for component health and space management

If you would like to hear more details on the recent changes, I recently covered the topic in-depth in a webcast, available as an archived version on the free BrightTALK platform here.

SNIA SMI also offers a comprehensive SMI-S Conformance Testing Program (CTP) to test adherence to the standard. This program offers independent verification of compliance that customers can view directly on the SNIA website at http://www.snia.org/ctp/. Storage buyers can use this information to make sure they are getting software which complies to the latest version of the specification and contains the latest features such as important security functions.

Don’t delay. Update to SMI-S 1.8 v3 today. The specification can be found here. Your one-stop shop for all SMI-S information is: https://www.snia.org/smis.

Get engaged! You can ask and answer questions on the SMI-S Developers Group here

Whether you’re a software provider or a hardware vendor, it’s a good time to check out the latest updates to the Storage Networking Industry Association’s (SNIA’s) Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) standard. The latest version SMI-S 1.8 v3 is now a SNIA Technical Position that meets your current needs and offers enticing new enhancements for you and your potential new customers. This version will also be sent to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for approval, making it a valuable asset worldwide if accepted.

“IT system administrators who demand a choice in storage vendors and infrastructure while ensuring advanced feature enablement through interoperability, have long benefitted from SMI-S,” says Don Deel, chairman, SMI Technical Work Group and SMI Governing Board. “The standard streamlines storage management functions and features into a common set of tools that address the day-to-day tasks of the IT environment.”

Since it was first defined, SMI-S has been continuously updated with new storage management functionality and is now incorporated into over 1,000 storage products. Version 1.5 of the specification received approval by ISO and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in 2015 and is designated as ISO/IEC 24775.

SMI-S 1.8 v3 represents a significant effort to update the standard. The new version includes a number of editorial changes, clarifications and corrections. It also contains functional enhancements such as new indications, methods, properties and profiles.

Users of SMI-S are being urged to move directly to SMI-S 1.8 v3 since v1.6.1 was the last version that was officially tested. In preparation for submission to ISO, SMI-S 1.8 v3 has been thoroughly reviewed and a number of corrections have been incorporated.

The SMI-S specification is divided into six books which cover the autonomous profiles and component profiles used to manage storage physical and virtual storage area network equipment.

The main new functions since 1.6.1 are in SMI-S 1.8 v3, summarized as follows:

• Fabric Book (Fabric and Switch)
  • Peer zoning enhancements
  • Enhancements to port speed
• Block Book
  • New indications for component health and space management
  • Storage Pool Diagnostics
  • New method in Block Services
  • New methods in Group Masking and Mapping
  • Enhancements to Replication Services
  • New method in Volume Composition
  • Advanced Metrics in Block Server Performance
• Common Profiles Book
  • New profile for WBEM Server Management
  • New method in iSCSI Target Ports Profile
• Host Book
  • New profiles for memory configuration
• Filesystem Book
  • New indications for component health and space management

If you would like to hear more details on the recent changes, I recently covered the topic in-depth in a webcast, available as an archived version on the free BrightTALK platform here.

SNIA SMI also offers a comprehensive SMI-S Conformance Testing Program (CTP) to test adherence to the standard. This program offers independent verification of compliance that customers can view directly on the SNIA website at http://www.snia.org/ctp/. Storage buyers can use this information to make sure they are getting software which complies to the latest version of the specification and contains the latest features such as important security functions.

Don’t delay. Update to SMI-S 1.8 v3 today. The specification can be found here. Your one-stop shop for all SMI-S information is: https://www.snia.org/smis.

Get engaged! You can ask and answer questions on the SMI-S Developers Group here