Come See SNIA at the Software-Defined Infrastructure Summit

Alex McDonald Leave a comment

Demand for software-defined infrastructure (SDI) is on the rise, and with good reason. SDI helps data centers meet the challenges of cloud computing, big data/analytics, mobility and social media, in an agile and cost-effective way.  I’m pleased to announce that SNIA will be an active participant at next week’s Software-Defined Infrastructure Summit in Santa Clara, CA, December 1-3.

My colleagues and I at the SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative have organized a “Working with OpenStack” Seminar that kicks off the Summit on Tuesday, December 1.

I will keynote an OpenStack fireside chat along with Chris DePuy, VP, at Dell’Oro Group. We’ll be discussing the SNIA Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) and its interface with OpenStack, OpenStack implementations, how standards play, and the future of open source in the 21st century.

My keynote will be accompanied by additional SNIA talks in the Introduction to OpenStack session and the Application Management session:

  • Sam Fineberg, PhD, SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative member and Distinguished Technologist at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Storage, will provide an overview of the storage aspects of OpenStack including the core projects for block storage (Cinder) and object storage (Swift), and the new shared file service (Manila). He’ll cover some common configurations and use cases for these technologies, and discuss how they interact with the other parts of OpenStack.
  • Richelle Ahlvers, SNIA Open Source Task Force member and Principal Storage Management Architect at Avago Technologies, will discuss application integration in OpenStack and how SNIA-developed standards enable cross-vendor management interoperability and help open source projects interoperate with more industry solutions.

Tuesday’s Seminar day will include additional sessions from leaders in OpenStack, Ceph, and Software Defined Storage. SDI Summit days 2 and 3 will provide information on hardware, software, and data center technology and applications of software-defined infrastructure featuring keynotes from IBM, Intel, Red Hat, and VMware, all SNIA member companies.  It’s a must attend event.

SNIA will also be exhibiting at the Summit. Please stop by booth #408 to learn how SNIA standards are used in open source projects including cloud data management, non-volatile memory, self-contained information retention, and storage management. We will also have information on SNIA programs such as membership, certification, conformance testing, and conferences.

SNIA members and colleagues can use the code SPGP to receive a $100 discount on any level of SDI Summit registration. I hope to see you in Santa Clara!

Upcoming Webcast: The Impact of International Data Protection Legislation on the Cloud

Alex McDonald Leave a comment

Data Privacy vs. data protection has become a heated debate in businesses around the world as governments across the globe are proposing and enacting strong data privacy and data protection regulations. Join us on November 18th for our next Cloud Storage live Webcast “Data Privacy vs. Data Protection: The Impact of International Data Protection Legislation on the Cloud.”

Mandating frameworks that include noteworthy changes like defining a data breach to include data destruction, adding the right to be forgotten, mandating the practice of breach notifications, and many other new elements are literally changing the rules when it comes to data protection. The implications of this, and other proposed legislation, on how the cloud can be utilized for storing data are significant. Join this live Webcast to hear:

  • “Directives” vs. “regulation”
  • General data protection regulation summary
  • How personal data has been redefined
  • Substantial financial penalties for non-compliance
  • Impact on data protection in the cloud
  • How to prepare now for impending changes

Our experts, Bob Plumridge, SNIA Europe Board Member; Eric Hibbard, Chair SNIA Security TWG, and I will all be available to answer your questions during the event. I encourage you to register today for this timely discussion. We hope to see you on November 18th!

Moving Data Protection to the Cloud: Key Considerations

Alex McDonald Leave a comment

Leveraging the cloud for data protection can be an advantageous and viable option for many organizations, but first you must understand the pros and cons of different approaches. Join us on Nov. 17th for our live Webcast, “Moving Data Protection to the Cloud: Trends, Challenges and Strategies” where we’ll discuss the experiences of others with advice on how to avoid the pitfalls, especially during the transition from strictly local resources to cloud resources. We’ve pulled together a unique panel of SNIA experts as well as perspectives from some leading vendor experts Acronis, Asigra and SolidFire who’ll discuss and debate:

  • Critical cloud data protection challenges
  • How to use the cloud for data protection
  • Pros and cons of various cloud data protection strategies
  • Experiences of others to avoid common pitfalls
  • Cloud standards in use – and why you need them

Register now for this live and interactive event. Our entire panel will be available to answer your questions. I hope you’ll join us!

 

See SNIA at OpenStack Summit Tokyo

mac Leave a comment

Are you headed to the OpenStack Summit in Tokyo later this month? If so, I encourage you to stop by two “Birds of a Feather” (BoF) sessions I’ll be hosting on behalf of SNIA. Here’s the info on both of them:

Extending OpenStack Swift with S3 and CDMI Interfaces – Tues. Oct. 27th 11:15 a.m.

Cloud application developers using the OpenStack infrastructure are demanding implementations of not just the Swift API, but also the S3 defacto and CDMI standard APIs. Each of these APIs not only offers features in common, but also offers what appear to be unique and incompatible facilities. At this BoF, we’ll discuss how to: Implement a multi-API strategy simply and effectively, sensibly manage the differences between each of the APIs, map common features to each other, take advantage of each of the APIs’ strengths, avoid lowest common denominator implementations

Object Drive Integration with Swift – Thurs. Oct. 29th 9:00 a.m.

With the emergence of disk drives and perhaps solid state drives with Key/Value and other object interfaces, what are the implications on solution architectures and systems built around OpenStack Swift. One approach is termed “PACO” where the Object Node speaks Key/Value to the drive and is hosted with other Swift Services. Are there other approaches to this? Are you developing products or solutions based on Object Drives? Come to this BoF to discuss these issues with fellow developers.

I expect both of these BoFs will be full of lively discussions around standards, emerging technologies, challenges, best practices and more. If you have any questions about these sessions or about work that SNIA is doing, do not hesitate to contact me. I hope to see you in Tokyo!

 

 

 

OpenStack File Services for HPC Q&A

Glyn Bowden Leave a comment

We got some great questions during our Webcast on how OpenStack can consume and control file services appropriate for High Performance Computing (HPC) in a cloud and multi-tenanted environment. Here are answers to all of them. If you missed the Webcast, it’s now available on-demand. I encourage you to check it out and please feel free to leave any additional questions at this blog.

Q. Presumably we can use other than ZFS for the underlying filesystems in Lustre?

A. Yes, there a plenty of other filesystems that can be used other than ZFS. ZFS was given as an example of a scale up and modern filesystem that has recently been integrated, but essentially you can use most filesystem types with some having more advantages than others. What you are looking for is a filesystem that addresses the weaknesses of Lustre in terms of self-healing and scale up. So any filesystem that allows you to easily grow capacity whilst also being capable of protecting itself would be a reasonable choice. Remember, Lustre doesn’t do anything to protect the data itself. It simply places objects in a distributed fashion of the Object Storage Targets.

Q. Are there any other HPC filesystems besides Lustre?

A. Yes there are and depending on your exact requirements Lustre might not be appropriate. Gluster is an alternative that some have found slightly easier to manage and provides some additional functionality. IBM has GPFS which has been implemented as an HPC filesystem and other vendors have their scale-out filesystems too. An HPC filesystem is simply a scale-out filesystem capable of very good throughput with low latency. So under that definition a flash array could be considered a High Performance storage platform, or a scale out NAS appliance with some fast disks. It’s important to understand you’re workloads characteristics and demands before making the choice as each system has pro’s and con’s.

Q. Does “embarrassingly parallel” require bandwidth or latency from the storage system?

A. Depending on the workload characteristics it could require both. Bandwidth is usually the first demand though as data is shipped to the nodes for processing. Obviously the lower the latency the fast though jobs can start and run, but its not critical as there is limited communication between nodes that normally drives the low latency demand.

Q. Would you suggest to use Object Storage for NFV, i.e Telco applications?

A. I would for some applications. The problem with NFV is it actually captures a surprising breadth of applications so of which have very limited data storage needs. For example there is little need for storage in a packet switching environment beyond the OS and binaries needed to stand up the VM’s. In this case, object is a very good fit as it can be easily, geographically distributed ensuring the same networking function is delivered in the same manner. Other applications that require access to filtered data (so maybe billing based applications or content distribution) would also be good candidates.

Q. I missed something in the middle; please clarify, your suggestion is to use ZFS (on Linux) for the local file system on OSTs?

A. Yes, this was one example and where some work has recently been done in the Lustre community. This affords the OSS’s the capability of scaling the capacity upwards as well as offering the RAID-like protection and self-healing that comes with ZFS. Other filesystems can offer those some things so I am not suggesting it is the only choice.

Q. Why would someone want/need scale-up, when they can scale-out?

A. This can often come down to funding. A lot of HPC environments exist in academic institutions that rely on grant funding and sponsorship to expand their infrastructure. Sometimes it simply isn’t feasible to buy extra servers in order to add capacity, particularly if there is already performance headroom. It might also be the case that rack space, power and cooling could be factors in which case adding drives to cope with bigger workloads might be the only option. You do need to consider if the additional capacity would also provoke the need for better performance so we can’t just assume that adding disk is enough, but it’s certainly a good option and a requirement I have seen a number of times.

 

OpenStack File Services Options

Glyn Bowden Leave a comment

How can OpenStack consume and control file services appropriate to High Performance Compute (HPC) in a cloud and multi-tenanted environment? Find out on September 22nd when SNIA Cloud hosts a live Webcast and examines two approaches to integration.

One approach is to have OpenStack manage the storage infrastructure services using Cinder, Nova and Neutron to provide HPC Filesystem as a Service.

A second option is to use Manila file services for OpenStack to control the HPC File system deployment and manage the exports etc. This part also looks at the creation (in progress) of the Lustre Manila driver and its current progress.

I hope you’ll join Alex McDonald and me as we discuss the pros and cons of each approach. Register today and

Cloud Storage Development Challenges – An SDC Preview

Alex McDonald Leave a comment

This year’s Storage Developer Conference (SDC) is expected to draw over 400 storage developers and professionals. On August 4th, you can get a sneak preview of key cloud topics that will be covered at SDC in this live Webcast where David Slik and Mark Carlson Co-Chairs of the SNIA Cloud Technical Work Group, together with Yong Chen, Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University will discuss:

  • Mobile and Secure – Cloud Encrypted Objects using CDMI
  • Object Drives: A new Architectural Partitioning
  • Unistore: A Unified Storage Architecture for Cloud Computing
  • Using CDMI to Manage Swift, S3, and Ceph Object Repositories

You’ll learn how encrypted objects can be stored, retrieved, and transferred between clouds, how Object Drives allow storage to scale up and down by single drive increments, end-user and vendor use cases of the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI), and we’ll introduce Unistore – an innovative unified storage architecture that efficiently integrates heterogeneous HDD and SCM devices for Cloud storage systems.

I’ll be moderating the discussion among this expert panel. It should be an enlightening and lively hour. I hope you’ll register now to join us.

 

Upcoming Webcast: Hybrid Clouds Part 2

Glyn Bowden Leave a comment

On June 10, 2015, SNIACloud will be hosting a live Webcast “Hybrid Clouds Part 2: A Case Study on Building a Bridge between Public and Private Clouds.” There are significant differences in how cloud services are delivered to various categories of users. The integration of these services with traditional IT operations will remain an important success factor but also a challenge for IT managers. The key to success is to build a bridge between private and public clouds. I’ll be back to expand upon our earlier SNIA Hybrid Clouds Webcast where we looked at the choices and strategies for picking a cloud provider for public and hybrid solutions. Please join me on June 10th to hear:

  • Best practices to work with multiple public cloud providers
  • The role of SDS in supporting a hybrid data fabric
  • Hybrid cloud decision criteria
  • Key implementation principles
  • Real-world hybrid cloud use case

Please Register now and bring your questions. This will be a live and interactive event. I hope to see you there.

 

 

Swift, S3 or CDMI – Your Questions Answered

mac 1 Comment

Last week’s live SNIA Cloud Webcast “Swift, S3 or CDMI – Why Choose?” is now available on demand. Thanks to all the folks who attended the live event. We had some great questions from attendees, in case you missed it, here is a complete Q&A.

Q. How do you tag the data? Is that a manual operation?

A. The data is tagged as part of the CDMI API by supplying key value pairs in the JSON Object. Since it is an API you can put a User Interface in front of it to manually tag the data. But you can also develop software to automatically tag the data. We envision an entire ecosystem of software that would use this interface to better manage data in the future

Q. Which vendors support CDMI today?

A. We have a page that lists all the publically announced CDMI implementations here. We also plan to start testing implementations with standardized tests to certify them as conformant. This will be a separate list.

Q. FC3 Common Services layer vs. SWIFT, S3, & CDMI – Will it fully integrate with encryption at rest vendors?

A. Amazon does offer encryption at rest for example, but does not (yet) allow you choose the algorithm. CDMI allows vendors to show a list of algorithms and pick the one they want.

Q. You’d mentioned NFS, other interfaces for compatibility – but often “native” NFS deployments can be pretty high performance. Object storage doesn’t really focus on performance, does it? How is it addressed for customers moving to the object model?

A. CDMI implementations are responsible for the performance not the standard itself, but there is nothing in an object interface that would make it inherently slower. But if the NFS interface implementation is faster, customers can use that interface for apps with those performance needs. The compatibility means they can use whatever interface makes sense for each application type.

Q. Is it possible to query the user-metadata on a container level for listing all the data objects that have that user-metadata set?

A. Yes. Metadata query is key and it can be scoped however you like. Data system metadata is also hierarchical and inherited – meaning that you can override the parent container settings.

Q. So would it be reasonable to say that any current object storage should be expected to implement one or more of these metadata models? What if the object store wasn’t necessarily meant to play in a cloud? Would it be at a disadvantage if its metadata model was proprietary?

A. Yes, but as an add-on that would not interfere with the existing API/access method. Eventually as CDMI becomes ubiquitous, products would be at a disadvantage if they did not add this type of interface.

 

 

 

New Webcast: Hierarchical Erasure Coding: Making Erasure Coding Usable

Glyn Bowden Leave a comment

On May 14th the SNIA-CSI (Cloud Storage Initiative) will be hosting a live Webcast “Hierarchical Erasure Coding: Making erasure coding usable.” This technical talk, presented by Vishnu Vardhan, Sr. Manager, Object Storage, at NetApp and myself, will cover two different approaches to erasure coding – a flat erasure code across JBOD, and a hierarchical code with an inner code and an outer code. This Webcast, part of the SNIA-CSI developer’s series, will compare the two approaches on different parameters that impact the IT business and provide guidance on evaluating object storage solutions. You’ll learn:

  • Industry dynamics
  • Erasure coding vs. RAID – Which is better?
  • When is erasure coding a good fit?
  • Hierarchical Erasure Coding- The next generation
  • How hierarchical codes make growth easier
  • Key areas where hierarchical coding is better than flat erasure codes

Register now and bring your questions. Vishnu and I will look forward to answering them.