Building Community to Tackle Cloud Object Storage Incompatibilities

The SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) conducted a poll early in 2024 during a live webinar “Navigating Complexities of Object Storage Compatibility,” citing 72% of organizations have encountered incompatibility issues between various object storage implementations. These results resulted in a call to action for SNIA to create an open expert community dedicated to resolving these issues and building best practices for the industry. Since then, SNIA CSTI partnered with the SNIA Cloud Storage Technical Working Group (TWG) and successfully organized, hosted, and completed the first SNIA Cloud Object Storage Plugfest (multi-vendor interoperability testing), co-located at SNIA Developer Conference (SDC), September 2024, in Santa Clara, CA. Participating Plugfest companies included engineers from Dell, Google, Hammerspace, IBM, Microsoft, NetApp, VAST Data, and Versity Software. Three days of Plugfest testing discovered and resolved issues and included a Birds of a Feather (BoF) session to gain consensus on next steps for the industry. Plugfest contributors are now planning two 2025 Plugfest events in Denver in April and Santa Clara in September. This webinar will share insights into industry best practices, explain the benefits your implementation may gain with improved compatibility, and welcome your client and server cloud object storage team to join us in building momentum. Join us on November 21st where we’ll discuss: • Implications on client applications • Complexity and variety of APIs • Access control mechanisms • Performance and scalability requirements • Real-world incompatibilities found in various object storage implementations • Missing or incorrect response headers • Unsupported API calls and unexpected behavior More information: • SNIA CSTI https://www.snia.org/groups/csti • SDC'24 https://www.sniadeveloper.org/ • Cloud Object Storage Plugfest (Sept. 2024) https://www.sniadeveloper.org/cloud-object-storage-plugfest