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Storage Technologies News Articles

What is the Zoned Namespace Specification?

network computing
June 2, 2021

In mid-2020, the NVMe Organization released the first revision of the Zoned Namespace specification (ZNS). This new specification has received a lot of attention, with promises of longer living drives that achieve higher performance under certain conditions. Since then, a number of companies have published roadmaps that include products with ZNS support. In this article, we'll review the significance of this specification and what ZNS drives are good for.

First, this specification is significant because it brings a new...

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How the OCP NIC 3.0 is Making Hyperscale Data Centers Cooler

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September 20, 2019

Managing and storing more data has forced hyperscale data center companies to reexamine not just how they build a data center but also the thousands of servers housed inside – including the connectors for server components.

Hyperscale data centers have the purchasing power and platform to work directly with manufacturers and engineer the optimized server. Rather than figuring out how to use the latest widget designed for the mainstream data center market, hyperscale data center companies are designing the...

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NVMe: Lower Prices, More Features Expand Use Cases

network computing
June 4, 2019

The wide adoption of Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) over the last few years has completely revolutionized the storage industry in no small part due to lower prices and better performance. With the introduction of more features, such as management, more enterprises and hyperscale data centers are migrating to NVMe. The introduction of NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) promises to accelerate this trend for enterprises using a variety of infrastructures.

NVMe is architected with a layered approach, which enables NVMe data...

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What is NVMe-oF interop testing and why is it important?

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May 2, 2019

Nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) has gained incredible adoption as a low-latency interface for connecting host systems with SSDs. NVMe storage attached directly to host systems via peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) is commonly available in high-end storage servers, laptops, and mobile devices.

A complementary specification, NVMe over fabrics (NVMeoF) defines the attachment of that same NVM storage media over a fabric with microsecond-level latency. The NVMe-oF specification was designed to be agnostic of the underlying transport, and an additional...

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Validating the Developing Standards of NVMe

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April 30, 2019

The non-volatile memory express (NVMe) storage controller interface continues extending into the data center, on the back of growing requirements for new levels of application performance acceleration. NVMe is typically deployed as direct-attach storage via a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) interface, which bypasses the latency overhead of storage networking but at the same time does not scale. NVMe-over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) is emerging to enable greater scalability with levels of latency that are closer to those of direct-attached storage. As...

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UNH-IOL Adds NVMe over TCP Testing

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March 14, 2019

The University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL) has expanded its Non-Volatile-Memory-Express-over-Fabric (NVMe-oF) testing capabilities to include NVMe over TCP. Ratified in November 2018, the NVMe/TCP spec adds Transmission Control Protocol to the list of NVMe transport protocols, which previously included Fibre Channel, remote direct memory access (RDMA), and PCIe. “NVMe/TCP adds the most commonly used networking protocol to NVMe,” said David Woolf, senior engineer for data-center technologies at UNH-IOL, in a telephone interview with EE Times. “It will let...

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Storage testing evolving from hardware to software

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March 13, 2019

Until a couple of years ago, the best way to test your storage hardware was by using a black box, but now there are more options. The new options are exclusively performed in software, courtesy of Calypso Systems, the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), and maybe soon from the University of New Hampshire's InterOperability Laboratory.

Load-testing software isn't new, but it generally works by running sample data through your network. In the Calypso system, released as a specification via...

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NVMe/TCP Conquers The UNH-IOL Plugfest

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January 17, 2019

Entering the New Hampshire University InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL) in November 2018, I was surrounded by servers, network cards, Ethernet cables hanging from the ceiling, and a lot of cool nerdy lab rats—like me. We were there to run the first-ever NVMe Over TCP (NVMe/TCP) plugfest.

This Proof of Concept (PoC) plugfest for the new NVMe/TCP protocol would bring together multiple vendors for the first time to validate their hardware and software implementations, specification compliance, and interoperability against each other....

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A Storage Story: NVMe over Fabrics and Fibre Channel

April 30, 2018

The next quantum leap in storage technologies is driving the need for faster storage fabrics to transport this data surge. Such an acceleration in storage demand and solutions requires storage transports to provide better overall performance as well as the ability to guarantee Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Of course, the storage solution I’m speaking about Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) and its latest expansion into NVMe over Fabrics.

First some housekeeping. References to NVMe-oF and FC-NVMe are prevalent and cause...

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Industry Outlook: NVMe and NVMe-oF For Storage

February 8, 2018

This week, Industry Outlook asks David Woolf, Senior Engineer of Datacenter Technologies at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), about NVMe and NVMe-oF and their role in storage and the data center. David has developed dozens of industry-reviewed test procedures and implementations as part of the team that has built the UNH-IOL into a world-class center for interoperability and conformance testing. He has also helped to organize numerous industry interoperability test events at both at the UNH-IOL facility...

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