SNIA Forms Ethernet Storage Forum

ORLANDO, Fla. -- At SNW this week, the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced a significant expansion in the charter of the SNIA IP Storage Forum, which is reflected in its new name the SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum. The mission of the SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum (ESF) is to drive the broad adoption of all Ethernet-connected storage networking solutions.

Initially, the Forum will consist of two Special Interest Groups – the iSCSI SIG and the NFS SIG. The iSCSI SIG will focus on continuing the successful IP Storage Forum agenda to create marketing and educational materials explaining the features, benefits and best practices related to iSCSI solutions in a variety of IT environments: windows, virtual server, heterogeneous host, high performance, and Small/Medium Enterprises. The goal is to drive the continued rapid market growth and broad adoption of the technology. Member companies include Compellent, Dell, HP, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, NetApp and Sun.

The new NFS SIG will be focused on creating a portfolio of marketing and educational materials explaining the features, benefits, use cases and best practices related to NFS-based NAS solutions. Particular focus will be on applications and benefits of emerging new capabilities, such as pNFS. The goal is to drive the continued market growth and broad adoption of NFS, and a rapid market uptake as vendors bring their pNFS implementations to market. The founding members of the NFS SIG include EMC, NetApp, Panasas and Sun.

The Forum also intends to form a Special Interest Group focused on the CIFS/SMB protocol and ecosystem. For relevant technologies that are specifically promoted by other industry groups, the Ethernet Storage Forum intends to pursue strategic alliances with those groups to broaden the reach of marketing materials and educational initiatives, and ensure consistent positioning across the industry.

“As the SNIA’s first marketing Forum, the IP Storage Forum built a solid reputation for delivering effective, vendor-neutral marketing and educational materials via the web, at events, and through media outlets around the globe,” said David Dale, SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum Chair. “However, the Forum was chartered only to promote IP-based SAN technologies - iSCSI, FCIP and iFCP - and we were constantly being asked by IT professionals why we don’t cover other Ethernet-based storage, such as NAS. The change in charter is largely in response to those requests, together with increasing market demand for Ethernet-connected storage, and continued vendor support.”In a separate release:

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), through its Technical Council (TC), today announced the creation of the Cloud Storage Technical Work Group (TWG) aimed at developing SNIA Architectures and best practices related to cloud storage technology. Additionally, at Storage Networking World Spring 2009, attendees will be able to learn more about Cloud Storage by attending the SNIA-sponsored Cloud Computing Summit on Monday, April 6, SNIA Tutorials on Monday, April 6 and SNIA’s Birds-of-a-Feather information session on Tuesday, April 7 at 8 p.m.

The SNIA Cloud Storage TWG will be the primary technical entity for the Association to identify, develop and coordinate system standards and interfaces for cloud storage. The initial TWG charter includes the focus to produce a comprehensive set of specifications and to drive the consistency of interface standards across the various cloud storage related efforts. “Cloud storage is a very hot topic within the IT community because of its potential to reduce IT costs and lessen complexity, while enabling unprecedented resources and services scalability to be accessed through global IT infrastructures and the Internet,” said Wayne M. Adams, Chair of the SNIA. “In order for the Cloud Storage market to deliver the promised value to the industry, there must be collaboration within the storage industry and among industry service providers to enable unfettered data migration between different Cloud Storage vendors as well as secure expansion of enterprise data centers. We are confident that the Cloud Storage TWG will help SNIA members, alliances, developers, service providers and end users by reducing risks associated with the deployment of new technology and accelerating adoption.”

Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA)