Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) SNIA is the globally recognized and trusted authority for storage leadership, standards, and technology expertise. Leading the storage industry by developing and promoting vendor-neutral architectures, standards and educational services that facilitate the efficient management, movement and security of information. The SNIA Dictionary, 18th Edition The SNIA Dictionary contains terms and definitions related to storage and other information technologies, and is the storage networking industry's most comprehensive effort to arrive at a common body of terminology for the technologies it represents. The terms go through a rigorous technical review and approval process by the SNIA Technical Council to assure their accuracy. The SNIA Technical Council is a group of technical experts elected by the members of SNIA to guide SNIA’s technical efforts. Their extensive individual technical backgrounds cover all aspects of storage. The reader should recognize that in this rapidly evolving field, new terminology is constantly being introduced, and common usage is shifting. SNIA regards this dictionary as a living document, to be updated as necessary to reflect a consensus on common usage, and encourages readers to treat it in that spirit. Suggestions for improvement are welcomed at any time and may be sent to [email protected]. SNIA owns the rights to all submitted comments and suggestions. Proposals for new terms or definitions, or modifications to existing ones, should be submitted on the form located at: http://www.snia.org/education/dictionary/submittal Periodically SNIA regional groups translate the SNIA dictionary into local languages. There are versions of the dictionary in Japanese, Portuguese, and Chinese. If you would like to lead a translation project, SNIA would be interested to help support this effort. Please contact [email protected]. SNIA Dictionary | 18th Edition i Terms of Use The SNIA hereby grants permission for individuals to use this glossary for personal use only, and for corporations and other business entities to use this glossary for internal use only (including internal copying, distribution, and display), provided that: Any definition reproduced must be reproduced in its entirety with no alteration, and, any document, printed or electronic, in which material from this glossary (or any portion hereof) is reproduced must acknowledge the SNIA copyright on that material, and must credit the SNIA for granting permission for its reuse. Other than as explicitly provided above, you may not make any commercial use of this glossary, sell any or all of this glossary, or distribute this glossary to third parties. All rights not explicitly granted above are expressly reserved to SNIA. In particular, the provisions above do not grant the rights to make any commercial use of this glossary, sell any or all of this dictionary, or distribute this dictionary to third parties. Permission to use this glossary for purposes other than those enumerated above may be requested by e-mailing [email protected]; please include the identity of the requesting individual and/or company and a brief description of the purpose, nature, and scope of the requested use. Copyright © 2004 - 2017 Storage Networking Industry Association, All Rights Reserved. Last updated July 28, 2017. Definition Format The format for definitions has changed as of the last half of 2008. Terms are now defined as much as possible using the substitution principle, which states that a term's definition should be substitutable for the term itself in a sentence. In the case that more text is required or deemed helpful, it is contained in one or more separate paragraphs after the definition itself. This text is informative in nature, and while intended to be accurate, is not technically part of the definition itself. ii SNIA Dictionary | 18th Edition Deprecated Synonyms In many cases, as technology develops, companies are forced to invent new terminology to describe innovations in their products. As the technology matures and vendors attempt to compete and compare their products with others, one or two terms become the most widely used, yet a number of other terms may remain in some use which are basically synonyms for the widely used terms. This causes confusion in the marketplace. To encourage crispness and uniformity in product descriptions, this dictionary lists synonyms of this type as "Deprecated synonym for xxxx," where xxxx is the term determined to have become canonical in the industry. This is to indicate both the meaning of xxxx and guide the reader toward use of the more canonical term. In cases where a synonym is not deprecated, the SNIA does not endorse the use of one synonym over another. Definitions Taken from Standards Documents The SNIA has a strong interest in keeping definitions harmonized across various industry groups and national and international standards bodies. Towards this end, some definitions, especially those pertaining to Fibre Channel and SCSI terms and technologies, have been quoted from the appropriate version of the INCITS standard. In all such cases, the INCITS standard is authoritative. The SNIA Dictionary may include terms defined in the the following standards and draft standards: INCITS 302-1998, SCSI Parallel Interface - 2 (SPI-2) INCITS 367-2003, SCSI Parallel Interface - 5 (SPI-5) INCITS 405-2005, SCSI Block Commands - 2 (SBC-2) INCITS 431-2007, Serial Attached SCSI - 2.1 (SAS-2.1) INCITS 447-2008, SCSI Architecture Model - 4 (SAM-4) INCITS 448-2008, SCSI Enclosure Services - 2 (SES-2) INCITS 461-2010, Fibre Channel - Switch Fabric-5 (FC-SW-5) INCITS 462-2010, Fibre Channel - Backbone-5 (FC-BB-5) INCITS 466-2011, Fibre Channel - Single-Byte Command Code Sets - 4 (FC-SB-4) INCITS 467-2011, SCSI Stream Commands - 3 (SSC-3) INCITS 470-2011, Fibre Channel - Framing and Signaling - 3 (FC-FS-3) INCITS 475-2011, Fibre Channel - Inter-Fabric Routing (FC-IFR) SNIA Dictionary | 18th Edition iii INCITS 476-2011, SAS Protocol Layer (SPL) INCITS 476/AM1-2012, SAS Protocol Layer Amendment #1 (SPL-AM1) INCITS 477-2011, Fibre Channel – Link Service - 2 (FC-LS-2) INCITS 478/AM1-2014, Serial Attach SCSI - 2.1 Amendment #1 (SAS-2.1-AM1) INCITS 479-2011, Fibre Channel - Physical Interface - 5 (FC-PI-5) INCITS 481-2012, Fibre Channel Protocol for SCSI - 4 (FCP-4) INCITS 484-2012, SCSI Media Changer Commands - 3 (SMC-3) INCITS 497-2013, Automation/Drive Interface – Commands - 3 (ADC-3) INCITS 505-2013, SAS Protocol Layer - 2 (SPL-2) INCITS 509-2014, Fibre Channel - Backbone - 6 (FC-BB-6) INCITS 514-2014, SCSI Block Commands - 3 (SBC-3) INCITS 516-2014, SCSI Stream Commands - 4 (SSC-4) INCITS 519-2014, Serial Attached SCSI - 3 (SAS-3) INCITS 556-201x, Fibre Channel NVMe (FC-NVMe) The SNIA wishes to thank ANSI and INCITS for their cooperation in this matter. Copies of INCITS standards may be purchased at ANSI's online store at http://webstore.ansi.org. iv SNIA Dictionary | 18th Edition Context Hierarchy Most of the terms in this dictionary have meaning primarily in specific sub-contexts of storage networking, such as SCSI or File Systems. The following categories are used to declare the context in which a given definition in this dictionary is held to be valid. No attempt has been made to date to rigorously define these categories, so they remain a guide to understanding, not a formal system. General --Hardware ----Network -------SCSI -------iSCSI -------Fibre Channel -------NVMe -------Infiniband ----Data Communication --Computer System ----Storage System --- Operating System -------Windows --Services Cloud --Management ----Data Management -------Backup -------Data Recovery -------Data Security -------Database -------File System -------Long Term Retention -------Capacity Optimization ----Storage Management --Energy --Standards --Legal The context hierarchy is a work in progress. In part, we are constrained by practice in previous editions of the dictionary. In the above hierarchy representation, context labels indented beneath other context labels represent specializations of the higher-order label concept. Below is an example of how context is indicated: context example [Context] The context is called out in square brackets at the beginning of each definition, as in this example. SNIA Dictionary | 18th Edition v Authors The following SNIA volunteers contributed to this version of the SNIA Dictionary: Carlos Pratt, Chair of Dictionary Team Mark Carlson, Toshiba John Crandall, Brocade Fred Knight, NetApp Bill Martin, Samsung Peter Murray, Virtual Instruments Tom Talpey, Microsoft David Thiel Past contributors include: David Black, EMC Corporation Roger Cummings, Symantec Don Deel, NetApp Eric Hibbard, HDS Leah Schoeb, Intel Steve Wilson, Brocade Alan G. Yoder Thanks also to the many unsung contributors who have submitted suggestions through the online submission portal. vi SNIA Dictionary | 18th Edition # Numbers 3DES [Data Security] Acronym for Triple DES. This algorithm is obsolete. 64B/66B [Data Communication] An algorithm for encoding data for transmission in which each 64-bit data word is converted to a 66-bit transmission character. Each transmission character is prefixed with either binary "01" or binary "10". This, combined with scrambling, gives the signal desirable engineering properties, yet incurs a much lower overhead than the traditional 8b/10b encoding. 8B/10B encoding [Data Communication] An algorithm for encoding data for transmission in which each eight-bit data byte is converted to