SNIA Joins Green Grid

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced today that it has formed an alliance with The Green Grid. The SNIA and its Green Storage Initiative (GSI) plan to work with The Green Grid in developing and promoting standards, measurement methods, processes and technologies to improve overall data center energy efficiencies.

Tackling the challenges associated with energy efficiency and green computing will require collaboration across all areas of the IT industry,” said Vincent Franceschini, Chair of the SNIA. “Storage plays an important role in power and energy efficiency within data centers and business computing ecosystems. With that, the SNIA’s Green Storage Initiative is dedicated to applying the technical and educational expertise of the storage industry to the broader view of the data center to collaborate, develop and find more energy efficient solutions for the IT industry.”

In a separate release:

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced today that the eXtensible Access Method (XAM) specification and Software Development Kit (SDK) are on-track for mid-2008 public availability and are driving software collaboration across the industry enabling the development of a single standard. XAM provides a framework for standards-based information independence for applications and storage systems. As such, XAM will deliver storage transparency to end users, along with the ability to assure information immutability to meet long-term digital information retention requirements.

The XAM Initiative and associated specification development efforts continue to progress and build momentum. Fifty companies, which include storage vendors, application developers and academia, are participating in the initiative and its two associated Technical Work Groups. The XAM specification version 1.0 release schedule is on track, and the SNIA plans to gain member approval for the specification in mid-2008 followed by its submission for ANSI and ISO accreditation. Additionally, the development of the XAM SDK has accelerated and is on track for mid-year availability for licensing to the industry.Advancing the XAM SDK development effort, the SNIA is also announcing that three active members have donated software in support of the initiative. EMC has contributed the C++ with Java Native Interface (JNI) Wrapper XAM Library; HP has donated a Java version of the XAM Library; and Sun added code from its Sun StorageTek 5800 (previously known as “Project HoneyComb") for the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Reference Vendor Implementation Modules (VIMs).“The donations from these three members, along with support from more than 45 other companies in the development of the software and specification, represent key pieces of the XAM program coming together to deliver a powerful and effective solution for storing and accessing information in massive reference data repositories,” said Vincent Franceschini, Chair of the SNIA. “From simplified porting and testing procedures for ISVs, to reducing vendor lock-in by decoupling the back-end storage from the application, to delivering a solid SDK, the XAM Initiative is delivering value to its three key constituencies – application developers, end users and storage vendors.”

In a separate release:

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Building on the results of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Data Management Forum’s (DMF) 100 Year Archive Requirements Survey the Association has taken several steps to help storage and information managing professionals improve their long-term information retention and preservation practices. At the forefront of these efforts is the formation of a Long-Term Digital Information Retention and Preservation Technical Working Group (LT-DIRP TWG) aimed at defining a new logical format standard and best practices for information preservation and migration.

“The results of the requirements study clearly found that there is a critical need for well-defined practices and standards associated with the long-term retention and preservation of an organization’s important information,” said Gary Zasman, Chair, DMF Long-Term Archive and Compliance Storage Initiative. “With more than 70 percent of respondents saying they are 'highly dissatisfied' with their ability to assure that they will be able to read and interpret their retained information in 50 years, there is a critical need for standards to assist users in retaining and preserving information for the future of their organizations. The requirements to keep information long term exist in many governmental regulations and organizational practices, but the existing technologies to support those requirements are costly and complex.”

Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA)0