NVMe™ Product Testing 101: Compliance and Interoperability

Ryan Holmqvist, Interop & Compliance Chair

NVMe™ technology is permeating the storage ecosystem and suppliers across the industry are taking advantage of NVMe architecture to streamline their legacy storage stacks and increase performance. Due to the rising popularity of NVMe technology and the upcoming NVMe-oF Plugfest #11, now is the time for a refresher on the importance of compliance and interoperability.

In this blog, I’ll highlight the significance of product testing and how you can get your product certified through the NVM Express, Inc. Compliance Testing Program.

NVM Express, Inc. Compliance Testing Program

The official NVM Express, Inc. Compliance Testing Program is performed through the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL). UNH-IOL offers testing for NVMe, NVMe Management Interface (NVMe-MI™) and NVM over Fabrics (NVMe-oF™), including Fibre Channel, RDMA and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) solutions. UNH-IOL uses its NVMe interop test beds to enable heterogeneous testing across various OS, drivers, and hardware platforms.

NVMe-enabled products that successfully pass the rigorous UNH-IOL testing are added to the NVMe Integrator’s List. The Integrator’s List includes categories for the various specifications: NVMe base specification, NVMe-MI and NVMe-oF. Securing a spot on an NVMe Integrator’s List is proof that your product met UNH-IOL’s compliance tests and interoperability test requirements. The NVMe Integrator’s List is an important benefit to members, as successful products are added to the NVM Express website and customers often use it to make purchasing decisions.

The next opportunity to have your NVMe-oF-enabled product added to the NVMe Integrators List is coming up at NVMe-oF Plugfest #11. The event will be held June 17–21, 2019 at UNH-IOL in Durham, NH. Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in the newly unveiled NVMe over TCP testing.

Dive Deeper into NVMe Compliance

Performing compliance and interoperability testing is a critical piece of the product development cycle. I encourage member companies to invest time in testing their NVMe-enabled products, to ensure faster time to market and better integration into the real world.

If you want to learn more about NVMe product testing, I invite you to watch the full recording of our NVMe™ Interoperability: Conformance, Stress/RAS Testing, and Support webcast. Members are also invited to join the Interop & Compliance Committee in order to stay up-to-date on all of the latest information about NVMe testing.