SNIA and OpenFabrics Alliance Formalize Agreement to Advance Standards-Based Management of High Performance Data Center Infrastructures

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Improving the Open Source Management of High-Performance Fabrics and Remote Network Services or Devices

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., BEAVERTON, Ore., April 13, 2021  ̶  The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), and the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) today announced an agreement to improve and promote the standards-based, open source management of high-performance fabrics and remote network services or devices in data center infrastructures. As part of the joint effort, a new open source fabric management framework being developed by the OFA – the OpenFabrics Management Framework (OFMF) – will utilize DMTF Redfish® and SNIA Swordfish specifications for comprehensive management of servers, storage and fabrics including NVMe® and NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) technology environments.

“The goal of the agreement is to establish reliable and scalable network access to remote, shared computing resources,” said Michael Oros, Executive Director, SNIA. “The SNIA Swordfish storage management specification is an extension of the DMTF Redfish specification, so this joint work with the OpenFabrics Alliance will provide IT administrators the ability to add seamless standards-based management of their fabrics and networks to the same Redfish and SNIA Swordfish ecosystem they are using for their servers and storage.”

New large-scale, computing designs are multi-node and linked together through high-speed networks. Over time, many different types of high-performance networking devices have arrived for usage by these modern, coupled-computing platforms.  Fabric Management requirements are needed by these high-speed networks to deploy, secure, and maintain optimized networks. This industry collaboration will help usher in the remote and shared access to advanced storage, distributed computation, and memory.

“OFA and SNIA are making a shared investment in universal management of the larger high-performance network ecosystem,” said Michael Aguilar, Chair of the OFMF Working Group. “The SNIA Swordfish and DMTF Redfish specifications will be extended by the OFA to provide a single unified framework for managing fabrics through the creation of OFMF. We anticipate that the OFMF will enable access across multiple types of fabrics, advance development of Remote Persistent Memory products, provide improved security, and accelerate development of new system architectures.”

The agreement also includes marketing collaboration to promote the SNIA and OFA standards through educational content that will include webcasts, social media, email campaigns, newsletters, and inclusion in news and events. Be sure to watch the recent webinar, Universal Fabric Management for Tomorrow’s Data Centers, to gain valuable insights from industry experts Richelle Ahlvers, SNIA and Phil Cayton, OFA.

About SNIA

The Storage Networking Industry Association is a not-for-profit global organization, made up of member companies spanning the global storage market. SNIA’s mission is to lead the storage industry worldwide in developing and promoting standards, technologies, and educational services to empower organizations in the management of information. To this end, the SNIA is uniquely committed to delivering standards, education, and services that will propel open storage networking solutions into the broader market.

About the OpenFabrics Alliance

The OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) is a 501(c) (6) non-profit company that develops, tests, supports and distributes through open source Advanced Network Software (ANS) – a suite of high-performance APIs and associated software for current and future HPC, cloud, and enterprise data centers. ANS is used by business, scientific research, and cloud applications that require fast fabrics, efficient storage and low-latency computing.  ANS is open source technology and is included in major Linux distributions and other leading operating systems. The OFA supports ANS through an annual workshop devoted to high performance networking, and offers interoperability testing to ensure interoperability between ANS and vendor-provided solutions. For more information about the OFA, visit https://www.openfabrics.org/

Media Contacts:
Joe Balich, OFA Press
press@216.137.189.21

Elie Georges, Ogilvy Public Relations, SNIA
elie.georges@ogilvy.com