Cloud Computing: It's What’s Inside that Counts

Server Message Block (SMB) is the core file-transfer protocol of Windows, MacOS and Samba, and has become widely deployed. It’s ubiquitous - a 30-year-old family of network code.

However, the latest iteration of SMB3 is almost unrecognizable when compared to versions only a few years old. Extensive reengineering has led to advanced capabilities that include multichannel, transparent failover, scale out, and encryption. SMB Direct makes use of RDMA networking, creates block transport system and provides reliable transport to zetabytes of unstructured data, worldwide.

SMB3 forms the basis of hyper-converged and scale-out systems for virtualization and SQL Server. It is available for a variety of hardware devices, from printers, network-attached storage appliances, to Storage Area Networks (SANs). It is often the most prevalent protocol on a network, with high-performance data transfers as well as efficient end-user access over wide-area connections.

In this SNIA-ESF Webcast, Microsoft’s Ned Pyle, program manager of the SMB protocol, will discuss the current state of SMB, including:

•Brief background on SMB
•An overview of the SMB 3.x family, first released with Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, MacOS 10.10, Samba 4.1, and Linux CIFS 3.12
•What changed in SMB 3.1.1
•Understanding SMB security, scenarios, and workloads
•The deprecation and removal of the legacy SMB1 protocol
•How SMB3 supports hyperconverged and scale-out storage

After you watch the webcast, check out the Q&A blog at http://sniaesfblog.org/?p=611

Any organization that takes a moment to study the data on their primary storage system will quickly realize that the majority (as much as 90 percent) of data that is stored on it has not been accessed for months if not years. Moving this data to a secondary tier of storage could free up massive amount of capacity, eliminating a storage upgrade for years. Making this analysis frequently is called data management, and proper management of data can not only reduce costs it can improve data protection, retention and preservation.

Now that you have become acquainted with basic container technologies and the associated storage challenges in supporting applications running within containers in production; let’s take a deeper dive into what differentiates this technology from what you are used to with virtual machines. Containers can both complement virtual machines and also replace them as they promise the ability to scale exponentially higher. They can easily be ported from one physical server to another or to one platform—such as on-premise—to another—such as public cloud providers like Amazon AWS. In this Webcast, we’ll explore “container best practices” that discuss how to address the various challenges around networking, security and logging. We’ll also look at what types of applications more easily lend themselves to a microservice architecture versus which applications may require additional investment to refactor/re-architect to take advantage of microservices.

After the webcast, check out the Q&A blog http://www.sniacloud.com/?p=233

When the SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum (ESF) last looked at the Ethernet Roadmap for Networked Storage in 2015, we anticipated a world of rapid change. The list of advances in 2016 is nothing short of amazing:

•New adapters, switches, and cables have been launched supporting 25, 50, and 100Gb Ethernet speeds including support from major server vendors and storage startups
•Multiple vendors have added or updated support for RDMA over Ethernet
•The growth of NVMe flash and release of the NVMe over Fabrics standard are driving demand for both faster speeds and lower latency in networking
•The growth of cloud, virtualization, hyper-converged infrastructure, object storage, and containers are all increasing the popularity of Ethernet as a storage fabric

The world of Ethernet in 2017 promises more of the same. Now we revisit the topic with a look ahead at what’s in store for Ethernet in 2017. With all the incredible advances and learning vectors, SNIA ESF is here to help you keep up. Here’s some of the things to keep track of in the upcoming year:
•Learn what is driving the adoption of faster Ethernet speeds and new Ethernet storage models
•Understand the different copper and optical cabling choices available at different speeds and distances
•Debate how other connectivity options will compete against Ethernet for the new cloud and software-defined storage networks
•And finally look ahead with us at what Ethernet is planning for new connectivity options and faster speeds such as 200 and 400 Gigabit Ethernet

The momentum is strong with Ethernet, and we’re here to help you keep on top of the lightning-fast changes.

After you watch the webcast, check out the Q&A blog http://sniaesfblog.org/?p=586

Come learn about the new capabilities for running IBM Spectrum Virtualize as software defined storage (SDS). This webinar will show how end users, MSPs and CSPs can better optimize block storage infrastructures as well as provide new storage services, such as disaster recovery. We will cover new deployment models for the software and share exciting new use cases around this SDS offering, which will enable hybrid cloud and software defined architectures.

Join a group of experts for a panel discussion on all things Disaster Recovery as-a-Service, Business Continuity, Cloud and Virtualization in the finance world. Representatives from iLand, Behind Every Cloud, and more will deep dive into:

- Disaster Recovery: a potted history of the technologies and limitations
- Virtualization Layer Replication: Disaster Recovery Re-invented
- What Next? Changing Finance Requirements and "Cloud"
- DRaaS: Disaster Recovery cost models re-invented
- The "perfect" Finance focused DRaaS model

In this part of the series, “Everything You Wanted To Know about Storage But Were Too Proud To Ask,” we’re going to be focusing on the network aspect of storage systems.

As with any technical field, it’s too easy to dive into the jargon of the pieces and expect people to know exactly what you mean. Unfortunately, some of the terms may have alternative meanings in other areas of technology. In this Webcast, we look at some of those terms specifically and discuss them as they relate to storage networking systems.

In particular, you’ll find out what we mean when we talk about:

•Channel versus Busses
•Control Plane versus Data Plane
•Fabric versus Network

For people who are familiar with Data Center Technology, whether it be Compute, Programming, or even Storage itself, some of these concepts may seem intuitive and obvious… until you start talking to people who are really into this stuff. This series of Webcasts will help be your Secret Decoder Ring to unlock the mysteries of what is going on when you hear these conversations.

After you watch the webcast, check out the Q&A blog http://sniaesfblog.org/?p=588

Virtualization workloads generate many requirements and challenges for IT departments, including high performance, low latency, high-availability and the ability to quickly move and reconfigure workloads based on changing demands. This presentation focuses on best practices for employing a wide array of different storage features in the Windows Server platform. Details range from the SMB 3.x protocol to data-deduplication, clustering, Hyper-V Replica, and many more related features. The presentation will begin with suggestions for determining requirements for different kinds of virtual disks and different business workloads. Based on these requirements, we'll drill-down in to practical advice on how, when, and why these features can help increase service delivery and reduce costs for virtualized environments of all sizes.

Join Anil Desai, independent consultant and author of over 20 technical books around Windows Server platform, virtualization, databases and IT management best practices. He has over 20 years of experience in architecting, implementing, and managing IT software and datacenter solutions. He has worked extensively with IT management, development, and database technology. Anil holds many technical certifications and is a twelve-time Microsoft MVP Award recipient (currently Cloud/Datacenter Management).

Come prepared to look at disaster recovery planning with a 360 degree view for the enterprise and SMB space, and walk away with technical ideas you can begin to implement immediately. During this presentation, we will discuss disaster recovery planning considerations and partnerships. We will also walk through technical solutions that provide a way to use virtualization and storage strategies for an approachable DR solution.

View this sneak preview of what's to come in our October Summits on BrightTALK! Storage and Virtualization and Next-Gen Data Centers live on the BrightTALK platform October 18-20, 2016.

Different workloads demand different attributes from their storage. These differences lead some to believe flash storage is only good for certain point use cases like accelerating databases. But the performance of flash systems lead others to claim a single flash system can support all workloads. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle. Join Storage Switzerland and IBM for this live interactive webinar where we bust another flash myth and help you select the right flash for the right workload for the right reasons.

Here is the highlight reel of SNIA's 2016 Data Storage Innovation Conference!

Most organizations making an investment in NetApp Filers count on the system to store user data and host virtual machine datastores from an environment like VMware. In addition these organizations want their NetApp systems to do more and be the repository for the next wave of unstructured data; data generated by machines. NetApp systems are busting at the seams, so these organizations are trying to decide what to do next.

To help you find out what to do next, join Storage Switzerland and Caringo for our live webinar and learn:

1. What are the modern unstructured data use cases
2. The challenges NetApp faces in addressing its customers’ issues
3. Other solutions; can all-flash or object storage solve these challenges
4. Making the move - how to migrate from NetApp to other systems
5. How to re-purpose, instead of replacing your NetApp

Discover the complexities of licensing database technologies such as Oracle, SQL Server and PostgreSQL on VMware, with particular emphasis on modern converged and hyper-converged platforms. It's vital to ensure your virtual machines stay compliant with your database vendor’s license requirements. Join us to learn about the business and financial risks involved if you don't have a solid plan in place for compliance, as well as explore strategies for controlling and/or reducing costs and limiting organizational risk.

Learn from MuleSoft experts on why legacy modernization is a vital step toward pursuing digital transformation, and how the Anypoint Platform can support legacy modernization in the federal government.

In less than a decade, virtualization and cloud technologies have transformed enterprise computing from top (applications) to bottom (storage).

During this time, computing has evolved from a tiered and operationally isolated architecture of front-end, application, database and storage servers — each tier having its own teams, processes, tools, and manual functions — to a tightly integrated, fully automated “stack” that’s orchestrated with a common set of people and tools.

Because of this unification and automation of the computing stack, enterprises can now instantly deploy workloads across private and public clouds with ease. While this evolution has been occurring on the computing side of IT, networks have remained largely unchanged. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies are about to change that.

Join Cradlepoint and analyst Dr. Jim Metzler in a discussion about SDN and NFV and how they are creating the new networking stack.