Security: Storage Management Q&A

Security is not really a “thing” at all, but rather a sort of condition. You can’t buy three tons of security! This “secure” condition can be said to exist when all the risks an organization faces are managed down to its risk tolerance at some point in time. Learn more in this candid Q&A article with SNIA Security TWG member, Richard Austin.

Invitation: SNIA’s 2016 Annual Members' Meeting — October 13th

SNIA members are cordially invited and encouraged to participate in our Annual All Members' Meeting. Mark your calendar: Thursday, October 13th at 8:00am - 9:00am Pacific Time. Join the SNIA Board, Chairman, Treasurer, and Executive Director as they announce the newly elected Board and Technical Council members, share an update on the organization’s vision, mission, technical and initiative/forum work, financial health, and strategy for the future of SNIA and the storage industry! Join us for this 45-minute update (detailed agenda and call logistics to follow). 
Voting Member Company Representatives are specifically requested to dial–in or arrange for a proxy company representative (quorum required).

Leading Storage Companies Unite Behind SNIA Swordfish

Microsoft Ignite provided the perfect venue for SNIA to showcase the broad industry collaboration of the new SNIA Swordfish™ storage management specification. SNIA’s Scalable Storage Management Technical Work Group (SSM TWG) is developing SNIA Swordfish, and its members represent many of the leading companies in the storage industry today, including Broadcom, Dell EMC, HPE, Intel, Microsoft, NetApp, Nimble Storage and VMware.
 
A big proponent of the standard, Jeffrey Snover, technical fellow at Microsoft, visited the Microsoft Ignite SNIA booth. He commented, “Microsoft is an active participant in developing SNIA Swordfish to make sure the most important scenarios for this specification will work well with our products.  Because SNIA Swordfish is an extension of Redfish that will be widely adopted in virtualized environments, vendors will no longer need to produce versions for any one particular operating system.”
 
Richelle Ahlvers, principal storage management architect at Broadcom, commented on how SNIA Swordfish simplifies storage management and allows OEMs to easily differentiate their products. “SNIA Swordfish defines a RESTful API which provides an extremely scalable storage management platform for file and block storage provisioning, volume mapping and masking, replication, and capacity and health reporting tools.”
 
To join the storage industry leaders in the continued development of the SNIA Swordfish standard, please email storagemanagement@snia.org.

SNIA Thought Leaders on Storage Trends Changing the Data Center

Intro to Containers, Container Storage Challenges and Docker
October 6, 2016
Chad Thibodeau, Veritas
Keith Hudgins, Docker
Alex McDonald, NetApp

Containers are the latest in what are new and innovative ways of packaging, managing and deploying distributed applications. In this Webcast, we’ll introduce the concept of containers, what they are and the advantages they bring illustrated by use cases, why you might want to consider them as an app deployment model, and how they differ from VMs or bare metal deployments. Join us for this discussion which will include an introduction to Docker and key takeaways from DockerCon 2016.

• Channel vs. Busses
• Control Plane vs. Data Plane
• Fabric vs. Network

Current State of Storage in the Container World

The first wave of adoption of container technology was focused on micro services and ephemeral workloads. The next wave of adoption won’t be possible without persistent, shared storage. This Webcast will provide an overview of Docker containers and the inherent challenge of persistence when containerizing traditional enterprise applications. We will then examine the different storage solutions available for solving these challenges and provide the pros and cons of each.

Practice Exam Now Available for SNIA Storage Foundations Certification

For storage professionals interested in obtaining the new SNIA Certified Storage Professional Certification, SNIA has developed a practice exam that will help determine if you have the skill set to pass the Certification exam. The practice exam is free of charge, and is available here.
 
Other training options for SNIA’s Foundations Certification are available here.

• Hyperscaled Enterprise Storage – SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative and Data Protection and Capacity Optimization White Paper
• Hyperscaler Storage – SNIA Technical White Paper
• Storage Security: An overview as applied to storage management - SNIA Technical White Paper

Memcon 2016 

Excitement at SNIA Storage Developer Conference 2016

It's a wrap! SNIA's 18th Storage Developer Conference is now in the books, with 124 general and breakout sessions and amazing networking among 450+ attendees.  Sessions on NVMe over Fabrics won the title of most attended, but Persistent Memory, Object Storage, and Performance were right behind.  SNIA would like to thank the many SDC 2016 sponsors who engaged attendees in exciting technology discussions.
 
And the buzz continues!  Whether or not your schedule permitted you to attend, SNIA is continuing to make the conference available to you. Check out:

• Keynote presentations on demand at SNIA's YouTube channel, SNIAVideo
• SDC presentations now available for download
• Coming soon: SDC podcasts, which combine audio and slides

Mark your calendars for SDC 2017, September 11-14, 2017 and watch for the Call for Presentations to open in February 2017.

2016 Data Storage Security Summit Keynote Sessions Now Available On-Demand

SNIA’s second annual Data Storage Security Summit focused on the important work SNIA Security and the industry are doing to enhance information assurance and optimize security investments.  Fifteen sessions made for a full day, with plenty of time for networking and discussion on data security in a flash world, deploying encryption and key management, the Apple vs. FBI debate, and storage security conundrums.  All keynotes, including a presentation on the intersection of IoT and Security by Steven Teppler of Abbott Law Group, are available for on-demand viewing, as well as presentation slides of all sessions. Visit the Summit website for details.