13 Apr 2010
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has ratified version 1.0 of an interface designed to manage data contained in public cloud environments.
Called the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI), the new standard is an interface for interoperable transfer and management of data in a cloud storage environment.
Using CDMI to link to cloud data storage customers, will be able to discover the capabilities of cloud storage and to use this interface to manage containers and the data that is placed in them, says SNIA.
CDMI can also be used by administrative and management applications to manage containers, domains, security access, and monitoring/billing information, even for storage that is functionally accessible by legacy or proprietary protocols, it says.
SNIA said that it hopes “the majority of existing cloud storage offerings today will likely be able to implement the interface.”
Being an interface, the standard does not itself secure data, but can manage the security capabilities intrinsic to cloud data storage environments.
SNIA is a not-for-profit organisation made up of 400 member companies from technology vendors like Cisco, Oracle, NetApp, Hitachi Data Systems to channel partners and end-users.
Its goal is "to promote acceptance, deployment, and confidence in storage-related architectures, systems, services, and technologies, across IT and business communities.”
User suggestions for revisions to the standard can be made on the SNIA feedback page.
Obviously CDMI was written without any input from records managers. Records management is one of the most important functions an organisation has - not just in terms of compliance, privacy and regulatory issues, but also in terms of corporate/organisational history.
The offer to "store everything" and make it persistently accessible, but have no framework, policies, or track history to prove they will be able to effectively do this, is going to cause problems for the data owners.
Knowing exactly where your data resides and being able to verify the secure disposition of regulated data is a legal requirement. The reality is that you have absolutely no idea where data in a cloud physically resides. There is no way CDMI is ISO 15489 compliant.
Posted by: Mike 14 Apr 2010
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