The NVMe specifications use the PCIe interface for low latency and scalable performance. Current PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSDs are 6-7x faster than a SATA SSD, and PCIe 4.0 SSDs are 12-13x faster than a SATA SSD. Read More
NVMe SSDs can me managed in-band (through the operating system) and out-of-band (outside of the host OS, generally through a BMC). Many open source management tools exist to manage NVMe SSDs, like nvme-cli in Linux that contains all the commands in the NVMe specification to monitor device health and endurance,… Read More
There are multiple commands in the NVMe specification to securely erase user data. The NVMe format command includes support for crypto erase to quickly erase user data by switching the crypto key, as well as full media erase which today physically erases the NAND. Sanitize is the other command to… Read More
The M.2 specification, defined by PCI-SIG, is a form factor for small devices, such as SSDs and WiFi cards. M.2 supports SATA as well as PCIe technology, but most commonly M.2 SSDs are NVMe SSDs. Read More
The use of PCIe SSD, NVMe SSD, NVMe/PCIe SSD are all common and acceptable. Most people today use NVMe SSD to imply a PCIe SSD (since that is what has existed from 2011 to today) but in the future, NVMe SSDs may also be on other physical interfaces beyond PCIe… Read More
NVM Express has partnered with the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) to build a third-party compliance program for validating NVMe, NVMe-MI and NVMe-oF products. The compliance program includes test services, test reports, plugfests, and compliance test tools. More information is available at https://nvmexpress.org/products/compliance/. Read More
There are many options for NVMe RAID. There is open source software NVMe RAID like mdadm in Linux, combination hardware and software with built-in NVMe RAID and hardware RAID cards from independent hardware vendors that support hardware offloads of the RAID functionality with a standard PCIe AIC HBA or RAID… Read More
RAID works on NVMe SSDs just like it did on previous storage devices. Linux mdadm supports NVMe RAID and has enhancements to improve reliability, performance, and scalability. There are independent hardware vendors that support NVMe based RAID cards for hardware acceleration as well. Read More
The NVMe specification has many features for power management, including support for non-operational power states for low idle power to extend the battery life of mobile devices and laptops. The NVMe specification has autonomous power state transitions so the device can decide when to enter a different active power state,… Read More
The NVMe protocol was designed to be scalable through asynchronous IO and not having to be blocked by uncacheable register reads. NVMe architecture is scalable across multiple interfaces, through PCIe with NVMe technologies and networked fabrics through NVMe-oF architecture. It can scale performance with varying PCIe lanes and higher capacity… Read More