Everything You Need to Know: An Essential Overview of NVM Express® 2.1 Base Specification and New Key Features

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Modern AI and HPC workloads require efficient data center hardware that promises the continued uptime of the overall system, while also remaining efficient, secure and flexible. NVM Express has continued to meet these needs with the recent release of three new specifications and eight updated specifications, including the NVM Express® (NVMe®) 2.1 Base Specification and additional features.

Our latest NVMe specifications release supports modern data center demands by including long-awaited feature releases, such as Live Migration, Key Per I/O, NVMe Management Interface (NVMe-MI™) High Availability Out of Band Management and more. We’re sharing a breakdown of the essential new features you need to know to bring your data center technology to the next level.

Data Center Upgrades: Increased Device Efficiency and Data Center Uptime

By utilizing efficient and robust hardware, data center architects can achieve consistent and easily accessible data management. We included multiple features in our new NVMe technology release to boost data center uptime and efficiency.

  • NVMe Network Boot / UEFI: enables data centers with NVMe devices to discover, attach to and load OS & boot from NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF™) subsystems. Data center architects can utilize NVMe technology to establish composable disaggregated infrastructures with added support for quick recovery of the overall system following a network shutdown or unexpected disaster.
  • NVMe High Availability: allows data centers to establish high availability systems utilizing NVMe solutions, providing increased reliability and delivering an expanded set of use cases for AI and HPC use cases. The feature also helps NVMe technology maintain continuous uptime in the data center, even when faced with large workloads.

Delivering Improved Security, Enhanced Access Control and Flexible Data Management

The frequency of cyberattacks occurring across the enterprise and hyperscale data centers increases year-over-year as hackers become more skilled in breaching firewalls and accessing tenant data. Data center architects continue to invest in hardware that provides enhanced security and resilience capabilities to protect against and resolve threats significantly faster. See a preview of the new features we added to drive strengthened security protocols and protections against security breaches.

  • NVMe Live Migration: adds the ability for hosts to migrate NVMe controllers and attached namespaces across NVMe subsystems. This feature boosts both data management in the data center as well as ensuring the efficient allocation of customer server space.
  • Key Per I/O: unique encryption keys can be used for data on each read/write operation, providing increased data protection and prevention against theft and loss of devices. This feature helps tenants maintain complete control over their data while supporting critical data management processes and expanding the total number of tenants possible in the data center.
  • Scalable Resource Management: is now a common framework for NVMe and NVMe-oF systems to construct, configure and provision resources based on workload-specific demands. This feature is vital for ensuring that data centers can reliably handle the increased demands of modern workloads.
  • Fabric Zoning and Pull Registrations: leverages a Centralized Discovery Controller (CDC) to ensure that only a host has access to namespaces allocated to the host, driving improved access control for data centers using NVMe devices.
  • Miscellaneous fabrics security enhancements to improve overall NVMe device security, especially for NVMe over TCP transports.

Join Us at FMS 2024 for a Deep Dive

Are you interested in reviewing the NVMe 2.1 Base Specification and more? You can access the full specification and features by visiting the specifications page of our website.

NVM Express will also host our annual sponsored speaker track at the Future of Memory and Storage (FMS) 2024 event. Join us during our presentations, on Wednesday, August 7 from 8:30 – 9:35 am PT and 3:00 – 4:05 pm PT in Ballroom A, Floor 1, for more information on the key features and up-and-coming features.