Data Protection in an Era of Massive Data Breaches

New Program for SNIA Tutorials – The SNIA Webcast Storage 101 Series

MacroSAN Joins SNIA’s SMI-S Conformance Testing Program

SDC 2018 Call for Presentations Now Open

Fibre Channel vs. iSCSI – This Great Debate Generates Questions Galore

SunRise Memory Corporation

Hype to Reality, a Panel Discussion with Leaders of Real World Persistent Memory Applications

File vs. Block vs. Object Storage
April 17, 2018
Mark Carlson, Toshiba; Alex McDonald, NetApp; Saqib Jang, Chelsio; John Kim, Mellanox

When it comes to storage, a byte is a byte is a byte, isn’t it? One of the enduring truths about simplicity is that scale makes everything hard, and with that comes complexity. And when we’re not processing the data, how do we store it and access it?
 
In this webcast, we will compare three types of data access: file, block and object storage, and the access methods that support them. Each has its own set of use cases and advantages and disadvantages. Each provides simple to sophisticated management of the data, and each makes different demands on storage devices and programming technologies.
 
Perhaps you’re comfortable with block and file, but are interested in investigating the more recent class of object storage and access. Perhaps you’re happy with your understanding of objects, but would really like to understand files a bit better, and what advantages or disadvantages they have compared to each other. Or perhaps you want to understand how file, block and object are implemented on the underlying storage systems – and how one can be made to look like the other, depending on how the storage is accessed. Join us as we discuss and debate:

• Storage devices
  • How different types of storage drive different management & access solutions
• Block
  • Where everything is in fixed-size chunks
  • SCSI and SCSI-based protocols, and how FC and iSCSI fit in
• Files
  • When everything is a stream of bytes
  • NFS and SMB
• Objects
  • When everything is a blob
  • HTTP, key value and RESTful interfaces
• Altogether…
  • When files, blocks and objects collide

Introduction to SNIA Swordfish™ ─ Scalable Storage Management
April 19, 2018
Richelle Ahlvers, Broadcom; Don Deel, NetApp

The SNIA Swordfish™ specification helps to provide a unified approach for the management of storage and servers in hyperscale and cloud infrastructure environments, making it easier for IT administrators to integrate scalable solutions into their data centers. Swordfish builds on the Distributed Management Task Force’s (DMTF’s) Redfish® specification using the same easy-to-use RESTful methods and lightweight JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) formatting. Join this webcast to receive an overview of Swordfish including the new functionality added in version 1.0.6 released in March 2018.
 
Everything You Wanted To Know About Storage But Were Too Proud To Ask - Part Aqua - Storage Controllers
May 15, 2018
Peter Onufryk, Microsemi; Craig Carlson, Cavium; Chad Hintz, Cisco; John Kim, Mellanox; J Metz, Cisco
 
Are you a control freak? Have you ever wondered what was the difference between a storage controller, a RAID controller, a PCIe Controller, or a metadata controller? What about an NVMe controller? Aren’t they all the same thing?

In Part Aqua of the “Everything You Wanted To Know About Storage But Were Too Proud To Ask” webcast series, we’re going to be taking an unusual step of focusing on a term that is used constantly, but often has different meanings. When you have a controller that manages hardware, there are very different requirements than a controller that manages an entire system-wide control plane. From the outside looking in, it may be easy to get confused. You can even have controllers managing other controllers!

Here we’ll be revisiting some of the pieces we talked about in our introduction to this webcast series, Part Chartreuse, but with a bit more focus on the variety we have to play with:

• What do we mean when we say “controller?” 
• How are the systems managed differently?
• How are controllers used in various storage entities: drives, SSDs, storage networks, software-defined
• How do controller systems work, and what are the trade-offs?
• How do storage controllers protect against Spectre and Meltdown?

Join us to learn more about the workhorse behind your favorite storage systems