Join the Solid State Storage Initiative August 4-7 at Flash Memory Summit 2014

The SNIA and the Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) invite SNIA members and non-members alike to attend Flash Memory Summit 2014, August 4-7, 2014 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

SNIA at Flash Memory Summit offers an all star keynote lineup, including SNIA Member companies Dell, Diablo, Fusion-io, IBM, Intel, Marvell, Micron, NetApp, PMC-Sierra, Samsung, and SanDisk.  SSSI members will lead panels and sessions on SSD, NVDIMM, and NVM Programming.

A SNIA Education Day on Monday, August 4 in Room 203/204 of the Santa Clara Convention Center will feature award-winning SNIA Tutorials on Flash and Storage where attendees can learn about secure storage, SSD workload testing, benefits of Flash storage to the enterprise, PCI Express, and Flash storage architectures from SNIA member experts.  This Education Day is complimentary to all FMS attendees.

Following the Education Day, all are welcome to attend a Solid State Storage Reception Monday evening from 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm in Room 203/204 featuring updates on the solid state disk market, an NVDIMM presentation, and an NVM Programming Model overview.  Visit displays that highlight SNIA Solid State Initiative programs, including Non Volatile Memory Programming, Performance Testing,  and Workload I/O Capture.  Learn how you can participate in the exciting 2014 programs of the SSSI.

A Non-Volatile DIMMs:  When Flash Isn’t Fast Enough Hands-On Lab presented by the NVDIMM SIG and SIG member companies AgigaTech, Netlist, and SMART Modular will illustrate how a category of NVDIMMs function in server and storage systems and how they can be integrated into a standard server platform.

And don’t forget to stop by SNIA SSSI Booth 808 in the Exhibit Hall to check out  five static and two live NVDIMM displays and new whitepapers, brochures, and news on SSDs.

Register now at www.flashmemorysummit.com

Use the code “SNIA” to sign up today and receive $100 off Full Conference, 3-Day Conference, and One-Day Technical Program registration

What a Solid State We Store In

Note:  This blog entry is authored by SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative Governing Board member Gilda Fosswho serves on the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative [SSSI] Governing Board as well as her role as Industry Evangelist in the CTO Office at NetApp, Inc

Solid state drives use semiconductor chips, as opposed to magnetic media, to store data.  The chips that solid state drives use are non-volatile memory meaning that the data remains even when the system has no power.  I’ve written about solid state drive technology in the past and I will continue to, for it represents the first major advancement in primary storage in a very long time.  Serving on the Governing Board of the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative, it allows me to help foster the growth and success of the market for solid state storage in both enterprise and client environments. Our goals are to be the recognized authority for storage made from solid state devices, to determine and document the characteristics of storage made from solid state devices, and to determine and document the impact of storage made from solid state devices on system architectures.

So what can you expect if you were to ever upgrade to an SSD?  Well, for starters your computing experience will be transformed with screaming fast random access speeds, multi-tasking proficiency, as well as fantastic reliability and durability… and you can choose between an external SSD or even a hybrid drive so you’ve got some options.  A new SSD will make your system faster because the boot times will decrease, launching apps will be lightening fast, opening and saving docs will no longer drag, copying and duplicating file speeds will improve, and overall your system will have a new ‘pep in its step’.  Furthermore, to promote being green, SSDs consume far less power than traditional hard drives, which means they also preserve battery life and stay cooler.  Who doesn’t want and need that? They’re also very quiet, with none of the spinning and clanking you get with HDDs – for obvious reasons. SSDs are cooler and quieter, all the while being faster.

Since modern SSDs are Flash-based, there is no real hard-defined difference between Flash and SSD.  Rather, as mentioned previously, Solid State Disk is essentially storage that doesn’t require moving parts and Flash is what allows that to exist.  SSDs use Flash instead of RAM these days, since it’s a type of memory that’s super fast and doesn’t require continuous power, making it non-volatile.  A match made in solid-state heaven.

There are some fundamental aspects that folks expect from a robust flash-based storage solution.  First off, I/O performance and efficiency for many applications, including database acceleration, server and desktop virtualization, and cloud infrastructure.  You should also expect to speed up overall IT performance, boost responsiveness of performance-critical applications, and reduce power costs and over-provisioning.  Furthermore, you will obviously use more high-capacity, low-cost SATA drives while improving utilization of your data center space.  If you can achieve all your flash-based goals without changing your IT infrastructure management processes, then you’ve really got it good.

Flash storage has customarily had substantial aging issues. In a nutshell, a user could only write to the memory a certain number of times before they would just lose that section of the drive coupled with the fact that performance would degrade over time, too.  However, a lot of these issues were resolved and companies started manufacturing SSDs out of Flash memory instead of out of RAM.

I’ve stated in the past that many people in the industry believe that flash SSDs will eventually replace traditional hard drives.  By the time this happens other characteristics, such as slower write time and added cost, will likely have been eradicated or significantly diminished. Even today, an SSD can extend the life of a laptop battery, reduce the weight of the system, make it quieter, and increase read performance.  When properly and optimally engineered, SSDs are now at least as reliable as traditional spinning hard drives.  Relating to the faster speed, think of one starting up in seconds versus minutes. Even the slowest current SSD gives you much improved real-world performance than does the fastest conventional hard drive, perhaps even 100x as fast.  This allows for better user productivity, allowing for more work to get done in a fraction of the time.  Furthermore, using flash in enterprise storage servers means you can support more users, do more work, and use less power so it’s no wonder that it’s become an important technology for business transactions.   It’s a solid win-win-win.

SSSI’s 2014 Mission

This SNIA initiative was formed in September 2008 and its mission is to foster the growth and success of the market for solid state storage in both enterprise and client environments. Our goals are to be the recognized authority for storage made from solid state devices, to determine and document the characteristics of storage made from solid state devices, and to determine and document the impact of storage made from solid state devices on system architectures.  Additionally, the SSSI collects solid state technical requirements of storage system vendors and communicate to SSD manufacturers for common features, behavior, and robustness.  The initiative collaborates with academia and the research labs of member companies to understand how advances in solid state memory will impact storage made from solid state memory as well as to educate the vendor and user communities about storage made from solid state devices.

The SNIA SSSI also coordinates education activities with the Education Committee, performs benchmark testing to highlight the performance advantages of solid state storage, create peer reviewed vendor neutral SNIA Tutorials, and create vendor-neutral demonstrations.  The SSI also leverages SNIA and partner conferences, collaborate with industry analysts, perform market outreach that highlights the virtues of storage made from solid state devices.  The initiative determines what technical work should be performed within SNIA technical working groups to further the acceptance of storage made from solid state devices.  Furthermore and very importantly, the SSSI determines the standards that will be necessary to support the industry usage of SSDs by performing interoperability plug-fests as necessary in support of standards development.

Collaboration between other SNIA organizations is also key.  The SSSI works with the Storage Management Initiative (SMI) to understand how SMI-S can be used to manage storage made from solid state devices.  We also work with the Green Storage Initiative (GSI) to understand how storage made from solid state devices will impact energy use in computer systems.  The work that the SSI does with the Technical Council helps create the desired technical working groups and provides external advocacy and support of these technical working groups.

Finally, the SSSI collaborates with other industry associations via SNIA’s Strategic Alliances Committee (SAC) on SSD-related technical work in which they are involved as well as coordinates with SNIA Regional Affiliates to ensure that the impact of the SSS Initiative is felt worldwide.  For more information, please visit http://www.snia.org/forums/sssi

Memory Channel Storage Demystified at Next PCIe SSD Committee Meeting on March 10

Join SSSI members for an “open” call on March 10, 2014 at 7:00 pm ET/4:00 pm PT.  SSSI member Jerome McFarland, Principal Product Marketer at Diablo Technologies, will talk about how memory channel storage technology works, how it’s deployed, and its advantages for applications.

Dial in at 1-866-439-4480 passcode 57236696.  A WebEx will be available at http://snia.webex.com, meeting number 792 152 928, password sssipcie.

The SSSI PCIe SSD Committee is a SSSI member committee that provides guidance to the marketplace on SSDs.  This can take the form of educational materials, best practices documents, and SNIA standards.

The “open” calls of the SSSI PCIe SSD Committee are designed to foster a broad understanding of technologies.  All SNIA and SSSI members, and those who are simply interested in technology advances, are welcome to attend.  Spread the word!

SSD Education Afternoon Monday January 27 at SNIA Symposium in San Jose

Interested in the latest information on SSD technology?  Join the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative Monday January 27 for lunch and an afternoon of the latest on:

  • Flash/SSD technology
  • SCSI Express
  • SAS
  • NVM Express
  • SATA Express
  • SSD performance
  • SSD Markets

Lunch begins at noon, with presentations from 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm.  There is no charge to attend this session at the Sainte Claire Hotel in downtown San Jose CA. You can attend in person – register at www.snia.org/events/symp2014 or by WebEx (click here for details and the agenda).

Add to your NVDIMM Knowledge – Attend the January 28 Summit

Over 150 individuals participated in the BrightTALK Enterprise Storage Summit NVDIMM webcast.  If you are eager for more information on NVDIMM, you will want to attend an upcoming SNIA Event – the Storage Industry Summit on Non–Volatile Memory.

This Summit will take place at the Sainte Claire Hotel in San Jose, CA on January 28th as part of the SNIA Annual Members’ Symposium, and will offer critical insights into NVM, including NVDIMMs, and the future of computing. This event is complimentary to attend and you can register here.

The Summit will take place from 8:15 AM to 5:30 PM and speakers currently include:

  • Nigel Alvares, Senior Director of Marketing, Inphi
  • Bob Beauchamp, Distinguished Engineer and Director Hardware Technology and Architecture, EMC
  • Matt Bryson, ABR Investment Strategy, LLC, SVP-Research
  • Jeff Chang, Vice President, Marketing & Business Development, AgigA Tech
  • Tom Coughlin, Founder, Coughlin Associates
  • Mark Geenen, President, TrendFocus
  • Jim Handy, Analyst, Objective Analysis
  • Jay Kidd, CTO, NetApp
  • Eden Kim, CEO, Calypso
  • Tau Leng, VP/GM, Supermicro
  • Jeff Moyer, Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat
  • Wes Mukai, VP of Cloud Computing, System Engineering, SAP
  • Jim Pinkerton, Lead Partner Architect, Microsoft
  • Adrian Proctor, VP Marketing, Viking Technology
  • Andy Rudoff, Senior Software Engineer, Intel
  • Esther Spanjer, Director, Marketing Management, SanDisk
  • Garret Swart, Database Architect, Oracle
  • Nisha Talagala, Lead Architect, Fusion-IO
  • Doug Voigt, Distinguished Technologist in Storage, HP

Visit http://www.snia.org/nvmsummit for more information and we hope you will join us in San Jose!

Join the SSSI at Flash Memory Summit August 12-15 in Santa Clara CA!

SSSI returns to the Flash Memory Summit in booth 808, featuring information on updates on new tests in the SNIA Solid State Storage Performance Test Specification-Enterprise 1.1, NVM programming, and Workload I/O Capture Program (WIOCP) activities; new tech notes and white papers, including a PTS User Guide Tech Note, a PCIe SSD 101 Whitepaper, and a Performance Primer Whitepaper; and PCIe SSD demonstrations from SSSI members Bitmicro, Fastor, and Micron.

flash memory summitAll current SSSI members attending FMS and individuals from companies interested in the SSSI and their activities are cordially invited to the SSSI Solid State Storage Reception Monday evening August 12 from 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm in Room 209-210 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.   At the reception, SSSI Education Chair Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates will provide an overview of the SSD market, and SSSI Chair Paul Wassenberg of Marvell will discuss SSD performance.  SSSI Vice Chair Walt Hubis of Fusion-io will discuss SSSI programs, including PTS, NVM Programming, Workload I/O Capture, and PCIe SSD.  Refreshments, table displays, and an opportunity drawing for SSDs provided by SSSI members Intel, Micron, and OCZ will be featured.

FMS conference activities begin August 13, and the agenda can be found here.  SSSI members speaking and chairing panels include:

Tuesday August 13

4:35 pm – Paul Wassenberg of Marvell on Standards

Wednesday August 14

8:30 am – Eden Kim and Easen Ho of Calypso Testers – PCIe Power Budgets, Performance, and Deployment

9:50 am – Eden Kim and Easen Ho of Calypso Testers –  SNIA Solid State Storage Performance Test Specification

3:10 pm – Walt Hubis of Fusion-io – Revolutionizing Application Development Using NVM Storage Software

3:10 pm – Easen Ho of Calypso Testers –  SSD Testing Challenges

4:30 pm – Paul von Behren of Intel –  SNIA Tutorial: SNIA NVM Programming Model:  Optimizing Software for Flash

Thursday August 15

3:10 pm – Jim Pappas of Intel – PCI Express and  Enterprise SSDs

3:10 pm – Jim Handy of Objective Analysis – Market Research

An open “Chat with the Experts” roundtable session Tuesday August 13 at 7:00 pm will feature Jim Pappas of Intel at a Standards table, Eden Kim of Calypso Testers at a SSD Performance table, Easen Ho of Calypso Testers at a Testing table, and Paul Wassenberg of Marvell at a SATA Express table.MESS - Final logo #2-Megan Archer

The Media Entertainment and Scientific Storage (MESS) will hold their August “Meetup” at the Open Chat with the Experts, and also be located in SSSI Booth 808 for further discussions.

Exhibit admission is complimentary until August 8.  SNIA and SSSI members and colleagues can receive a $100 discount on either the 3-day conference or the 1-day technical program using the code SNIA at www.flashmemorysummit.com.

 

Recommended Reading List on SSDs and Performance

SSSI has developed an extensive library of educational materials about SSD performance and how to use the SSS Performance Test Specifications to measure it.  If you’re new to SSDs or simply want to become more knowledgeable on the subject, we can help.

Below is a list of white papers, presentations, webcasts, and even a video that discuss SSDs, SSD performance and how it should be measured.  The list is in the recommended order of reading / viewing, and ranges from basic overviews to technical details.  Hope you find this useful.

  1. What more logical place to start than Solid State Storage 101?  This white paper talks about SSDs, how they work and how they fit into system architectures.
  2. Another white paper, NAND Flash Solid State Storage for the Enterprise, looks at Flash memory in more detail and how SSD controllers work.
  3. Facing an SSS Decision? Here is How SNIA is Helping Users Evaluate SSS Performance is a presentation that starts to delve into SSD performance and the basic principles of the SSS Performance Test Specification.
  4. The presentation Validating SSS Performance also introduces the SSS PTS, but in additional detail.
  5. The Solid State Storage Performance Test Specification (SSS PTS) White Paper provides an easily understandable introduction to the SSS PTS.
  6. Here’s a video of our own Eden Kim Describing the SSS PTS at Storage Visions 2012.
  7. SNIA Solid State Storage Test Specification is a more technical description of the contents of the SSS PTS.
  8. Now that you’ve read all about them, the actual SSS PTS documents can be downloaded here.
  9. And finally, SSSI has put together a webpage on Understanding SSD Performance, which explains the test results generated from the SSS PTS and what they mean to users.

You can find a lot of other informative material related to SSDs on the SSSI Education page.

If you have any questions, comments or requests, please comment on this post or send a message to asksssi@snia.org.

Understand SSD Performance Project

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.

 

Webcast – The Benefits of Solid State in Enterprise Storage Systems

Update:  A recording of this webcast is available here.

Presenter: Tom Coughlin, SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative and President, Coughlin Associates

Abstract: This session presents a brief overview of the solid state technologies which are being integrated into enterprise storage systems today, including technologies, benefits, and price/performance. It describes where they fit into today’s typical enterprise storage architectures today, with descriptions of specific use cases. Finally, the session speculates briefly on what the future will bring.