Author: Alex McDonald

Not Again! Data Deduplication for Storage Systems

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As explained in our webcast on Data Reduction, “Everything You Wanted to Know About Storage But Were Too Proud to Ask: Data Reduction,” organizations inevitably store many copies of the same data. Intentionally or inadvertently, users and applications copy and store the same files over and over; with developers, testers and analysts keeping many more copies. And backup programs copy the same or only slightly modified files daily, often to multiple locations and storage devices.  It’s not unusual to end up with some data replicated thousands of times, enough to drive storage administrators and managers of IT budgets crazy. 

So how do we stop the duplication madness? Join us on November 10, 2020 for a live SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) webcast, “Not Again! Data Deduplication for Storage Systems”  where our SNIA experts will discuss how to reduce the number of copies of data that get stored, mirrored, and backed up.

Attend this sanity-saving webcast to learn more about: 

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Non-Cryptic Answers to Common Cryptography Questions

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The SNIA Networking Storage Forum’s Storage Networking Security Webcast Series continues to examine the many different aspects of storage security. At our most recent webcast on applied cryptography, our experts dove into user authentication, data encryption, hashing, blockchain and more. If you missed the live event, you can watch it on-demand. Attendees of the live event had some very interesting questions on this topic and here are answer to them all:

Q. Can hashes be used for storage deduplication?  If so, do the hashes need to be 100% collision-proof to be used for deduplication?

A. Yes, hashes are often used for storage deduplication. It’s preferred that they be collision-proof but it’s not required if the deduplication software does a bit-by-bit comparison of any files that produce the same hash in order to verify if they really are identical or not. If the hash is 100% collision-proof then there is no need to run bit-by-bit comparisons of files that produce the same hash value.

Q. Do cloud or backup service vendors use blockchain proof of space to prove to customers how much storage space is available or has been reserved?   

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Applied Cryptography Techniques and Use Cases

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The rapid growth in infrastructure to support real time and continuous collection and sharing of data to make better business decisions has led to an age of unprecedented information storage and easy access. While collection of large amounts of data has increased knowledge and allowed improved efficiencies for business, it has also made attacks upon that information—theft, modification, or holding it for ransom — more profitable for criminals and easier to accomplish. As a result, strong cryptography is often used to protect valuable data.

The SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) has recently covered several specific security topics as part of our Storage Networking Security Webcast Series, including Encryption 101, Protecting Data at Rest, and Key Management 101. Now, on August 5, 2020, we are going to present Applied Cryptography. In this webcast, our SNIA experts will present an overview of cryptography techniques for the most popular and pressing use cases. We’ll discuss ways of securing data, the factors and trade-off that must be considered, as well as some of the general risks that need to be mitigated. We’ll be looking at:

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Encryption Q&A

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Ever wonder how encryption actually works? Experts, Ed Pullin and Judy Furlong, provided an encryption primer to hundreds of attendees at our SNIA NSF webcast Storage Networking Security: Encryption 101. If you missed it, It’s now available on-demand. We promised during the live event to post answers to the questions we received. Here they are:

Q. When using asymmetric keys, how often do the keys need to be changed?

A. How often asymmetric (and symmetric) keys need to be changed is driven by the purpose the keys are used for, the security policies of the organization/environment in which they are used and the length of the key material. For example, the CA/Browser Forum has a policy that certificates used for TLS (secure communications) have a validity of no more than two years.

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Encryption 101: Keeping Secrets Secret

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Encryption has been used through the ages to protect information, authenticate messages, communicate secretly in the open, and even to check that messages were properly transmitted and received without having been tampered with. Now, it’s our first go-to tool for making sure that data simply isn’t readable, hearable or viewable by enemy agents, smart surveillance software or other malign actors.

But how does encryption actually work, and how is it managed? How do we ensure security and protection of our data, when all we can keep as secret are the keys to unlock it? How do we protect those keys; i.e., “Who will guard the guards themselves?”

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Networking for Hyperconvergence

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“Why can’t I add a 33rd node?”

One of the great advantages of Hyperconverged infrastructures (also known as “HCI”) is that, relatively speaking, they are extremely easy to set up and manage. In many ways, they’re the “Happy Meals” of infrastructure, because you have compute and storage in the same box. All you need to do is add networking.

In practice, though, many consumers of HCI have found that the “add networking” part isn’t quite as much of a no-brainer as they thought it would be. Because HCI hides a great deal of the “back end” communication, it’s possible to severely underestimate or misunderstand the requirements necessary to run a seamless environment. At some point, “just add more nodes” becomes a more difficult proposition.

That’s why the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) is hosting a live webcast “Networking Requirements for Hyperconvergence” on February 5, 2019. At this webcast, we’re going to take a look behind the scenes, peek behind the GUI, so to speak. We’ll be talking about what goes on back there, and shine the light behind the bezels to see:

  • The impact of metadata on the network
  • What happens as we add additional nodes
  • How to right-size the network for growth
  • Networking best practices to make your HCI work better
  • And more…

Now, not all HCI environments are created equal, so we’ll say in advance that your mileage will vary. However, understanding some basic concepts of how storage networking impacts HCI performance may be particularly useful when planning your HCI environment, or contemplating whether or not it is appropriate for your situation in the first place.

Register here to save your spot for February 5th. Our experts will be on hand to answer your questions.

This webcast is the second installment of our Storage Networking series. Our first was “Networking Requirements for Ethernet Scale-Out Storage.” It’s available on-demand as are all our educational webcasts. I encourage you to peruse the more than 60 vendor-neutral presentations is the NSF webcast library at your convenience.

FCoE vs. iSCSI vs. iSER: Get Ready for Another Great Storage Debate

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As a follow up our first two hugely successful “Great Storage Debate” webcasts, Fibre Channel vs. iSCSI and File vs. Block vs. Object Storage, the SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum will be presenting another great storage debate on June 21, 2018. This time we’ll take on FCoE vs. iSCSI vs. iSER.

For those of you who’ve seen these webcasts, you know that the goal of these debates is not to have a winner emerge, but rather provide unbiased education on the capabilities and use cases of these technologies so that attendees can become more informed and make educated decisions.

Here’s what you can expect from this session: One of the features of modern data centers is the ubiquitous use of Ethernet. Although many data centers run multiple separate networks (Ethernet and Fibre Channel (FC)), these parallel infrastructures require separate switches, network adapters, management utilities and staff, which may not be cost effective.

Multiple options for Ethernet-based SANs enable network convergence, including FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) which allows FC protocols over Ethernet and Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) for transport of SCSI commands over TCP/IP-Ethernet networks. There are also new Ethernet technologies that reduce the amount of CPU overhead in transferring data from server to client by using Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA), which is leveraged by iSER (iSCSI Extensions for RDMA) to avoid unnecessary data copying.

That leads to several questions about FCoE, iSCSI and iSER:

  • If we can run various network storage protocols over Ethernet, what differentiates them?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of FCoE, iSCSI and iSER?
  • How are they structured?
  • What software and hardware do they require?
  • How are they implemented, configured and managed?
  • Do they perform differently?
  • What do you need to do to take advantage of them in the data center?
  • What are the best use cases for each?

Register today to join our SNIA experts as they answer all these questions and more on the next Great Storage Debate: FCoE vs. iSCSI vs. iSER. We look forward to seeing you on June 21st.

 

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

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The SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum recently hosted the first of our “Great Debates” webcasts on Fibre Channel vs. iSCSI. The goal of this series is not to have a winner emerge, but rather provide vendor-neutral education on the capabilities and use cases of these technologies so that attendees can become more informed and make educated decisions. And it worked! Over 1,200 people have viewed the webcast in the first three weeks! And the comments from attendees were exactly what we had hoped for:

“A good and frank discussion about the two technologies that don’t always need to compete!”

“Really nice and fair comparison guys. Always well moderated, you hit a lot of material in an hour. Thanks for your work!”  

“Very fair and balanced overview of the two protocols.”

“Excellent coverage of the topic. I will have to watch it again.”

If you missed the webcast, you can watch it on-demand at your convenience and download a copy of the slides.

The debate generated many good questions and our expert speakers have answered them all: Read More

The Great Debates – Our Next Webcast Series

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The SNIA ESF is announcing a new series of webcasts, following our hugely successful “Everything You Wanted To Know About Storage But Were Too Proud To Ask” webcasts. Those focussed on explaining storage technology from the ground up, and while they were pretty all encompassing in their storage technology coverage, they didn’t compare or contrast similar technologies that perform broadly similar functions.

That’s what we’re going to do in our new “Great Debates” series, the first of which was “FC vs. iSCSI.” It’s now available on-demand. I encourage you to check it out. It’s a great debate with experts who really know their stuff.

But wait… FC vs. iSCSI? That “versus” sounds more like an argument than a discussion. Was there a winner? Was this a technology fight, with a clear-cut winner and a loser? The answer is an emphatic “No!” Read More

FC vs. iSCSI – The Debate Continues

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It’s one of the great IT debates: Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI. We at the SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum thought this was this perfect way to kick off the New Year, so we’re hosting a live webcast “FC vs. iSCSI” on January 31st with experts who will not be afraid to highlight differences and compare and contrast these two storage protocols.

In the enterprise, block storage typically handles the most critical applications such as database, ERP, product development, and tier-1 virtualization. The dominant connectivity option for this has long been Fibre Channel SAN (FC-SAN), but recently many customers and block storage vendors have turned to iSCSI instead. FC-SAN is known for its reliability, lossless nature, 2x FC speed bumps, and carefully tested interoperability between vendors. iSCSI is known for running on ubiquitous Ethernet networks, 10x Ethernet speed bumps, and supporting commodity networking hardware from many vendors.

Because, FCoE also delivers increasing performance as Ethernet speeds increase – and, Fibre Channel also delivers increasing performance as FC speeds increase. Historically, FC delivered speed bumps at a more rapid interval (2x bumps), while Ethernet delivered their speed bumps at a slower pace (10x bumps), but that has changed recently with Ethernet adding 2.5G, 5G, 25G, 40G, and 50G to the traditional 1G, 10G, 100G timeline.

As the storage world moves to more flash and other non-volatile memory, more cloud, and more virtualization (or more containers), this debate becomes even more interesting. Attend this webcast to learn:

  • Will Fibre Channel or iSCSI deliver faster performance? Does it depend on the workload?
  • How is the wire speed race going between FC and iSCSI? Does anyone actually run iSCSI on 100GbE? When will 128Gb Fibre Channel arrive?
  • Can any server or storage array actually support more than 32Gb/s or 40Gb/s speeds?
  • Do Linux, Windows, or hypervisors have a preference?
  • Is one really easier to install and manage, or are they just different?
  • How does the new NVMe over Fabrics protocol affect this debate?

I will be moderating this event where storage networking experts Fred Knight (NetApp) and John Kim (Mellanox) will argue in an energetic, yet friendly way about the differences and merits of each. And they will be available to answer your questions on the spot. I encourage you to register today and start off 2018 with this exciting and informative discussion.