If you attended yesterday’s SSSI meeting at the SNIA Winter Symposium, thanks.  If not, you missed a great bunch of informative sessions on a range of topics, including SSD performance, security, caching, and the PCIe SSD Roundtable.  The presentations are posted at www.snia.org/forums/sssi/knowledge/education.

At last week’s Storage Vision conference, SSSI announced the Understanding SSD Performance project, which is intended to educate users about how to use the SSS PTS (Performance Test Specification) to make intelligent decisions about SSD performance.  You can find the press release here.

The project outcomes so far include a new webpage at www.snia.org/forums/sssi/pts, a white paper (www.snia.org/forums/sssi/knowledge/education), and a webcast.

Join us for the webcast on January 19 at 11AM Pacific Time by going to www.brighttalk.com/webcast/663/40549.

Join Tom Coughlin, Marketing Chair, SNIA SSSI and President, Coughlin Associates,  for an informative SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative webcast on Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 11:00 am PT/2:00 pm ET.

Solid Security:  The Rise of Self-Encrypted Solid State Drives

http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/663/37987  

Protecting user data is important in storage devices.  If valuable information is on a storage device, it makes sense to make sure that that data isn’t accessible by unauthorized individuals or organizations.  Protecting user data from being stolen or accessed leads to the use of encryption in storage devices. 

With one of the hottest drive categories – solid state drives (SSDs) – rapidly penetrating data centers,  this hour-long webcast provides a valuable introduction to  self-encrypting drives (SEDs) and explains why organizations need SEDs Solid State Drives in their environment.  Listen, ask questions, and find out from your peers where they are in incorporating SEDs and SSDs in their environment.

An article by SSSI member Tom Coughlin on Self Encrypting Drives  was just published in the October edition of  Storage Networking Solutions.   Tom defines SED, discusses the advantages of a SSD SED, and forecasts the rate of adoption of this important technology.  It starts on page 17.

SSSI member Jim Handy at Objective Analysis has started a blog dedicated to SSDs.  Jim is an avid follower of the SSD market, and his blog will doubtless be a great resource.

You’ll find the link on the SSSI Blogroll.

For those who don’t already know, a blogroll is a list of recommended blogs.  The SSSI website now has a page dedicated to two such lists – SSD-specific blogs and general storage blogs that mention SSDs from time to time.

If you have a favorite storage blog that’s not listed, please send a link to the email address at the bottom of the blogroll page.  Or add a comment to this post.

Just one more way that SSSI is working to be the source for all things SSD.

We had previously mentioned that the SSS Performance Test Specification won an award at the Flash Memory Summit. 

A photo of the award is now available here.

There’s a new page on the SSSI website which describes the wide range of SSD form-factors (physical formats) on the market today.   SSSI defines three major categories – Solid State Drive, Solid State Card, and Solid State Module – and the new page provides descriptions and examples of each.

Take a look.

Just posted to the SSSI site is the latest version of the SSSI Glossary.  New to this edition is a complete set of terms from the SSS Performance Test Specification.

The new glossary can be downloaded here.

SSSI had a busy booth at FMS.  Show attendees stopped by to discuss the newly released Client Performance Test Specification, and to see a demonstration of the high performance SSD product from member Texas Memory Systems.

We were honored to win a best-of-show award from FMS.  The Enterprise PTS won the Best Enterprise Application category.  The judges were impressed by the industry-wide cooperative effort that went into creating the specification.

It was exciting to hear from companies who have implemented or are planning to implement the PTS.  Watch for some case studies to be posted to the SSSI site. 

A successful show in all respects.