TF-Storage Task Force - Storage

The aims of this Task Force are:

1. • to provide a forum for gathering expertise, exchanging and promoting ideas, experience and knowledge related to next-generation/augmented data storage technology, delivery models and services;
   • to identify, and promote the use of common techniques, technology, procedures and best practices in the field of data storage and data management that are relevant to the research and education community;
   • to coordinate, support and - where possible - collaborate on the development, evaluation, deployment and maintenance of storage services and applications for the benefit of academic community and NRENs;
   • to address the data privacy issues in storage systems (especially in cloud storage) by liaising with the GÉANT SIG-ISM group;
   • to address storage systems and identity federations for transparent access to NREN’s storage services, applications and clouds; liaising with REFEDS;
   • to accommodate the technical discussions on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) related initiatives taken up by NRENs interested in computing, storage and network resource visualization and management;
   • to liaise with SNIA and other industrial stakeholders and communities and projects such as GÉANT, Internet2, APAN, EGI, EUDAT, CERN, Helix-Nebula as well as individual developers and researchers.

Forum for gathering expertise, exchanging and promoting ideas, experience and knowledge related to next-generation, data storage technologies and architectures, delivery models, services and applications:

a.   Technology watch for commercial and open source storage technologies: including data centre, clustered and distributed storage systems and solutions.
Led by: PSNC

b.   Overview of (national) storage activities and deployments: gathering and publishing (on the wiki and possibly in blogs) the information on projects, activities and deployments of storage systems and services.
Led by: Heanet

c.   On-demand micro-collaboration on ad-hoc well-defined storage topics that facilitates the sharing of knowledge and workload among individuals for the benefit of their home organizations.

      Led by GÉANT

Support for the NRENs’ initiatives related to storage infrastructure, services and applications development, evaluation, deployment and maintenance:

a.   Evaluation, testing and (possibly) development of scalable and flexible data storage and management systems (Software Defined Storage) following the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) delivery model or objects/cloud storage model.

Led by: PSNC/ACOnet

b.   Collecting and publishing cookbooks and best-practices on cost-effective, reliable storage system design, evaluation and tendering. Establish and maintain liaisons with commercials.

Led by: SWITCH/CARNet

a.   Liaising with REFEDS on access federations for storage services.

Led by: BELNET

b.   Addressing the security models in storage systems. Liaise with the SIG-ISM;

      considering the legal implications of EU directives, national laws and recommendations provided by security organizations (ENISA, NIST) related to data privacy and trust, data handling, transfer, processing etc.

Led by: GÉANT