Everything You Wanted To Know about Storage: Getting from Here to There

In the ongoing evolution of the datacenter, a popular debate involves how storage is allocated and managed. There are three competing visions about how storage should be done; those are Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI), Disaggregated Storage, and Centralized Storage.

IT architects, storage vendors, and industry analysts argue constantly over which is the best approach and even the exact definition of each. Isn’t Hyperconverged constrained? Is Disaggregated designed only for large cloud service providers? Is Centralized storage only for legacy applications?

Tune in to debate these questions and more:
• What is the difference between centralized, hyperconverged, and disaggregated infrastructure, when it comes to storage?
• Where does the storage controller or storage intelligence live in each?
• How and where can the storage capacity and intelligence be distributed?
• What is the difference between distributing the compute or application and distributing the storage?
• What is the role of a JBOF or EBOF (Just a Bunch of Flash or Ethernet Bunch of Flash) in these storage models?
• What are the implications for data center, cloud, and edge?

Join us on May 4, 2021 for another SNIA Networking Storage Forum Great Storage Debate as leading storage minds converge to argue the definitions and merits of where to put the storage and storage intelligence.

The storage industry is working on ways to meet the demand for the very high throughput required for the volume of transactions per second in Blockchain operations.

There have been numerous advancements in Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) logics to improve the number of transactions per second for Blockchain operations. But these FPGA/ASIC improvements will not be sufficient for increasing the demand of hardware resources required for Blockchain. Smart network interface cards (NICs) offload low-level functions from server CPUs, dramatically increasing network and application performance, offloading all network related processing.

In this webcast, you will learn:
• The features of a Smart Network Interface Card (SMART-NIC) and how this will improve Blockchain transactions
• Why using SCM is ideal for in-memory databases
• Advantages of direct data movement without involving filesystems
• Benefits of using SCM to improve Blockchain transactions

Fibre Channel (FC) networks run on a highly streamlined protocol designed to offer persistently high performance. The FC protocol has built-in feedback mechanisms to avoid congestion and to alleviate it if it occurs. There are many new technologies being developed to monitor and manage performance and availability issues that may arise from time to time. Moreover, many of these tools are available across the ecosystem and are part of the FC standard.
Come listen to Fibre Channel technology experts to understand:
• New technologies like FPIN notification
• Exciting new innovations coming to the FC network
• How to ensure predictable performance
• QoS considerations
• Why FC is the best transport protocol for storage environments

In the world of cloud services development, it's necessary to gain an edge on the myriad of competition facing your product or service. Volume and variety are not just characteristics of cloud data, but also of the software needed to deliver accurate decisions. While a variety of software techniques exist to create effective development teams, sometimes it's worthwhile to look elsewhere for additional success factors. In this webcast, we'll be focusing on adapting some of the principles of modern manufacturing to add to the development toolbox. A Continuous Delivery methodology ensures that the product is streamlined in its feature set while building constant value to the customer via the cloud. Attendees will learn the following:

- Structuring development and testing resources for Continuous Delivery
- A flexible software planning cycle for driving new features throughout the process
- A set of simple guidelines for tracking success
- Ways to ensure new features are delivered before moving to the next plan

Start-up companies interested in using business analytics have a series of choices regarding different hardware, software, and services available in the cloud. The decision process for established companies, though, is more significant. Considering whether to use existing practices or start anew creates multiple decision points in any process. This SNIA webcast will feature views from both start-up and established companies on how to make the analytics decision. Attendees should expect to learn:
• Real-world examples of the analytics decision process
• How to use cloud resources in unique ways to accomplish business and engineering goals
• Starting from the perspective of business requirements and developing technical metrics
• Thoughts on when to start new vs. adapt existing analytics processes
After you watch the presentation, check out the Q&A blog: https://bit.ly/3u5pNtm

Over the past several years, many in the NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) ecosystem have used test results demonstrating NVMe-oF’s dramatic reduction in latency as a way to extrapolate the benefit it can provide to application consumers. To date, the focus has been on specialized fabrics like RDMA and Fibre Channel (FC).

Unfortunately, the more important questions have been left as an exercise for the buyer: “How does the transport really impact application performance?” and “How does the transport holistically fit into my environment?”


RDMA based fabrics (e.g., RoCE) provide the lowest possible latency, and FC provides the most reliability, but with the introduction of NVMe/TCP this conversation must also include scale, cost and operations. This webcast will attempt to answer these questions beyond “it depends.”

Gain insights from an industry wide panel of NVMe and fabric technology experts as they discuss the thought process you can use to determine pros and cons of a fabric for your environment, including:
• Use cases driving fabric choices
• NVMe transports and their strengths
• Industry dynamics driving adoption
• Considerations for scale, security, and efficiency
After you watch the webcast, check out the Q&A blog at: bit.ly/3wRPeQV

Artificial Intelligence technologies are possibly the most substantive and meaningful change to modern business. The ability to process large amounts of data with varying degrees of structure and form enables large leaps in insight to drive revenue and profit. Likewise, governments and civil society have significant opportunity for improvement of the lives of the populace. However, with the power that AI brings comes the risks of any technology innovation. This interactive session will cover some of the ethical issues that AI can bring. Attendees should expect to learn:
• How making decisions at the speed of AI could be ethically challenging
• Examples of how companies have structures to approach AI policy
• The pitfalls of managing the human side of AI development
• Potential legal implications of using AI to make decisions
• Advice for addressing potential ethics issues before they are unsolvable

After you watch the webcast, check out the Q&A blog https://bit.ly/3vW5WOF

Got Fibre Channel questions? Here’s your chance to get them answered. Coming together from multiple vendors and various technical disciplines, the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA’s) depth of Fibre Channel expertise in unmatched.

On February 24, 2021, FCIA experts will share their knowledge by answering your Fibre Channel questions. Wondering which workloads are best suited for NVMe over Fibre Channel or why Fabric Services are important? Perhaps you have a specific question on performance, peer zoning or cabling & connectors. Ask away!

So, whether you’re a Fibre Channel novice or you’ve been working with it for 20 years, you likely have at least one question that could use some clarification. You may submit up to three questions for our panel. We’ll do our best to get to them all.

Submit your Fibre Channel questions here: http://bit.ly/AskFCIA

So much of what we discuss within SNIA is the latest emerging technologies in storage. While it’s good to know about what technology is coming, it’s also important to understand the technologies that should be sunsetted.

In this webcast, you’ll learn about storage technologies and practices in your data center that are ready for refresh or possibly retirement. Find out why some long-standing technologies and practices should be re-evaluated. We’ll discuss:

•Obsolete hardware, protocols, interfaces and other aspects of storage
•Why certain technologies are no longer in general use
•Technologies on their way out and why
•Drivers for change
•Justifications for obsoleting proven technologies
•Trade-offs risks: new faster/better vs. proven/working tech

After you watch the webcast, check out the Q&A blog at https://bit.ly/3aGyeUK

The COVID-19 Pandemic has amplified cybersecurity concerns particularly related to the cloud. Threat actors have recognized a unique opportunity to exploit pandemic-related vulnerabilities through social engineering attacks, business email compromise, work from home or other remote weak points. This results in increased risk and occurrence of ransomware attacks and data breaches that can disrupt or totally compromise organizations’ ability to conduct business. These security incidents can also subject victims to liability for violations of privacy and data breach notification laws. Join this webcast as SNIA experts will discuss:
• Changing threat landscape due to COVID
• Recent attacker exploits
• Common security failures and their consequences
• Data Protection (Mounir)
o Strategies to combat malware
o Minimizing ransomware risks
• How emerging technologies (5G, IoT, AI, etc.) expand the threat landscape

After you watch the webcast, check out the Q&A blog at https://bit.ly/3qp2j0B

Digital storage is a critical technology for professional Media and Entertainment (M&E). With the Covid-19 pandemic much M&E work went remote, enabled by cloud based services and private and public cloud storage. NVMe SSDs and emerging memories are assuming increased use in high resolution, high frame rate, high dynamic range video content workflows. Between 2019 and 2025, about a 3X increase is expected in the required storage capacity in the industry and a 3.4X increase in storage capacity shipped per year. Cloud storage capacity for the M&E industry will increase 13X between 2019 and 2025.

This webinar looks at the trends driving demand for digital storage in all parts of the M&E industry, with data from the 2020 Digital Storage in Media and Entertainment report from Coughlin Associates presented by Tom Coughlin, who also serves as the volunteer Education Chair for the SNIA Compute, Memory, and Storage Initiative.

The Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI™) International Standard is intended for application developers who are implementing cloud storage systems, and who are developing applications to manage and consume cloud storage. It documents how to access cloud storage namespaces and how to manage the data stored in these namespaces. In this webcast we’ll provide an overview of the CDMI standard and cover CDMI 2.0:

•Support for encrypted objects
•Delegated access control
•General clarifications
•Errata contributed by vendors implementing the CDMI standard

After you watch the presentation, check out the Q&A blog: https://bit.ly/3a8ohPX

Gen 7, the newest generation of Fibre Channel, doubles performance to 64GFC with switches and HBAs now available in the market. But what does 2021 hold for the network protocol standard? What impact will NVMe over Fibre Channel have in the datacenter? Tune into this webcast to hear answers to these questions and more.

Founder and principal market analyst Casey Quillin of Quillin Research, will provide his perspective on storage networking trends and will join FCIA experts as they share insights on the continued innovation of Fibre Channel and what datacenter managers can expect in 2021 and beyond.

Attendees will be provided with a link to the latest edition of the 2020 Fibre Channel Solutions Guide, packed with additional technical information to help you navigate the networking landscape.

Join us for a look at:
•Storage networking trends
•The features and timing of Fibre Channel technology migration reflected in the Fibre Channel Roadmap
•The need for standards
•Fibre Channel security standards

After you watch the webcast, check out the Q&A blog: http://bit.ly/2PJ8uz3

There is a new wave of cognitive services based on video and image analytics, leveraging the latest in machine learning and deep learning. In this webcast, we will look at some of the benefits and factors driving this adoption, as well as explore compelling projects and required components for a successful video-based cognitive service. This includes some great work in the open source community to provide methods and frameworks, some standards that are being worked on to unify the ecosystem and allow interoperability with models and architectures. Finally, we’ll cover the data required to train such models, the data source and how it needs to be treated.

However, there are challenges in how we do this. Many archives were analog and tape based which doesn’t stand up well to mass ingestion or the back and forth of training algorithms. How can we start to define new architectures and leverage the right medium to make our archives accessible whilst still focusing on performance at the point of capture?

We will discuss:

•New and interesting use cases driving adoption of video analytics as a cognitive service
•Work in the open source arena on new frameworks and standards
•Modernizing archives to enable training and refinement at will
•Security and governance where personal identifiable information and privacy become a concern
•Plugging into the rest of the ecosystem to build rich, video centric experiences for operations staff and consumers

After you watch the video, check-out the Q&A blog: https://sniacloud.com/video-analytics-qa/

In modern analytics deployments, latency is the fatal flaw that limits the efficacy of the overall system.  Solutions move at the speed of decision, and microseconds could mean the difference between success and failure against competitive offerings.  Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and In-Memory Analytics solutions have significantly reduced latency, but the sheer volume of data and its potential broad distribution across the globe prevents a single analytics node from efficiently harvesting and processing data.

This panel discussion will feature industry experts discussing the different approaches to distributed analytics in the network and storage nodes.

Organizations inevitably store multiple copies of the same data. Users and applications store the same files over and over, intentionally or inadvertently. Developers, testers and analysts keep many similar copies of the same data. And backup programs copy the same or similar files daily, often to multiple locations or storage devices. It’s not unusual to end up with some data replicated thousands of times.

So how do we stop the duplication madness? Join this webcast where we’ll discuss how to reduce the number of copies of data that get stored, mirrored, or backed up as we discuss:

•Should I eliminate duplicates at the desktop, server, storage or backup device?
•Dedupe technology
•Local vs. global deduplication
•Avoiding or reducing data copies (non-dupe)
•Block-level vs. file- or object-level deduplication
•In-line vs. post-process deduplication
•More efficient backup techniques

Register today (but only once please) for this webcast so you can start saving space and end the extra data replication.

The age of cloud has taken over IT. Organisations have incorporated cloud not only in their IT solution but also in their nomenclature. But Public Cloud resources come at a price, and organisations must be well aware of these charges and ensure that they do not fall prey to vendor lock-in. After all, the devil is in the details.


Find out how organisations can leverage MultiCloud strategies to optimise resources across private and public multi-cloud environments.