If the Answer is NVMe, what were and are the questions?

If NVMe is the answer, then what were and are the various questions that should be asked?

Some of the common questions include what is the difference between NVM and NVMe?

Is NVMe only for servers, does NVMe require fabrics and what benefit is NVMe beyond more IOPs.

Lets take a look at some of these common NVMe conversations and other questions.

Main Features and Benefits of NVMe

Some of the main feature and benefits of NVMe among others include:

• Lower latency due to improve drivers and increased queues (and queue sizes)
• Lower CPU used to handle larger number of I/Os (more CPU available for useful work)
• Higher I/O activity rates (IOPS) to boost productivity unlock value of fast flash and NVM
• Bandwidth improvements leveraging various fast PCIe interface and available lanes
• Dual-pathing of devices like what is available with dual-path SAS devices
• Unlock the value of more cores per processor socket and software threads (productivity)
• Various packaging options, deployment scenarios and configuration options
• Appears as a standard storage device on most operating systems
• Plug-play with in-box drivers on many popular operating systems and hypervisors

NVM and Media memory matters

Whats the differences between NVM and NVMe? Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) which as its name implies is persistent electronic memory medium where data is stored. Today you commonly know about NVMs as NAND flash Solid State Devices (SSD), along with NVRAM among others emerging storage class memories (SCM).

Emerging SCM such as 3D XPoint among other mediums (or media if you prefer) have the premises of boosting both read and write performance beyond traditional NAND flash, closer to DRAM while having durability also closer to DRAM. For now, let’s set the media and mediums aside and get back to how they or will be accessed as well as used.

Read more here.