In a world where data fuels every aspect of our lives, speed and efficiency have become paramount. The exponential growth of data, coupled with the rise of real-time applications and analytics, has created a pressing need for storage solutions that can keep pace. Traditional storage technologies, limited by their architecture and interface bottlenecks, struggle to deliver the speed and responsiveness required by today’s data-intensive workloads.
NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) has emerged as a game-changing technology that revolutionizes storage, dramatically accelerating data transfer speeds, reducing latency and enabling near-instantaneous access to data. This blog aims to provide an overview of the NVMe technology, its benefits, and best practices for maximizing its potential.
What is NVMe?
NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is a protocol designed explicitly for high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) and modern storage devices. At its core, NVMe uses a streamlined command set and a scalable, parallel design to fully utilize the low-latency and high-speed characteristics of NAND flash memory. The architecture eliminates legacy bottlenecks and maximizes the full potential of SSDs, delivering exceptional performance and responsiveness.
Let’s look at 4 key elements of an NVMe deployment:
- NVMe Controller: Acts as the interface between the host and the SSD, managing command execution, data transfers, and error handling. It implements various data protection mechanisms, such as error correction codes and end-to-end data integrity checks.
- NVMe Driver: Establishes communication between the operating system and the NVMe controller, enabling command submission, queue management, and data transfer. It facilitates the efficient utilization of the underlying hardware resources and enables seamless integration of NVMe drives into the storage ecosystem.
- NVMe Queueing Model: Enables parallelized and efficient data transfers through submission and completion queues, supporting advanced features (such as multiple queues, interrupt coalescing, and doorbell registers) for optimized command processing and reduced latency. For comparison, NVMe can accommodate up to 64k queues and 64k commands per queue, whereas traditional HDDs are limited to a single command queue with up to 256 commands, depending on the technology.
- PCIe Interface: Provides high-speed communication between the host system and NVMe-enabled devices, offering higher bandwidth and lower latency compared to traditional storage interfaces. In comparison to SATA, which relies on a single lane for data transfer, the PCIe interface utilizes up to four lanes, maximizing data throughput.
Benefits and Advantages of NVMe
As mentioned earlier, one of the standout benefits of NVMe is its ability to deliver incredibly low latency and high throughput. Unlike traditional storage interfaces, NVMe eliminates the bottlenecks caused by legacy protocols, enabling storage media to reach their full potential. The result is faster data access, reduced application response times, and improved system performance – all of which contribute to happier end-users and increased productivity. That’s why NVMe is an ideal choice for applications that demand high-performance storage, such as databases, virtualization, and analytics, AI/ML, etc.
While its streamlined design minimizes command overhead and maximizes I/O efficiency, NVMe is also power-efficient, resulting in reduced energy consumption and lower operational costs. By supporting security protocols like encryption and access controls to safeguard sensitive data, NVMe ensures protection against unauthorized access. NVMe also incorporates advanced error detection and correction mechanisms, ensuring data integrity and minimizing the risk of data loss or corruption.
NVMe: Not to be Confused with NVME over Fabrics (NVMe-oF)
While NVMe is a protocol designed for local storage access over PCIe, NVMe-oF, extends NVMe’s benefits over a network fabric, enabling remote access to NVMe storage resources, making it suitable for distributed environments. NVMe-oF leverages different network protocols such as RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access), TCP/IP, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet), and iWARP (Internet Wide Area RDMA Protocol) to transport NVMe commands and data over a network.
It is important to note that implementing NVMe-oF can be more complex when compared to NVMe. Storage/IT architects may need to evaluate and optimize the infrastructure (such as the adapters HBAs and network fabric) to support NVMe-oF. More importantly, the applications need to be compatible with and optimized for NVMe-oF. To maximize the benefits of NVMe-oF, it is recommended to assess application compatibility and consider application-specific optimizations or modifications.
Drive Performance to New Heights: Harness the Power of NVMe Through Software-Defined Storage
While NVMe is relatively simpler to implement than NVMe-oF – without having to deal with complex network requirements and infrastructure considerations – it involves several key steps to ensure proper implementation. Here is a high-level overview of the process:
While this seems like a tedious initiative, there are ways to reduce the effort and avoid potential roadblocks like downtime and expensive forklift upgrades that disrupt business operations.
You can non-disruptively integrate NVMe-compatible storage devices into your infrastructure, with the help of software-defined storage (SDS). Abstracting the underlying hardware, SDS allows you to manage the storage infrastructure through software-defined policies. Storage pooling helps break silos and allows applications to access data from logical volumes served from the pool. Because applications are not directly coupled with any physical storage, it becomes easy to switch storage equipment and replace or install new NVMe-powered gear. No architectural rework, no storage downtime, and no disruption to I/O operations.
Place Only Hot Data on NVMe
Not all data stored is frequently accessed and considered “hot.” Industry estimates suggest that only a small portion, typically around 10-20% of your total data volume, falls into the hot data category. Therefore, it may not be cost-effective to adopt NVMe all-flash technology for all your data. By strategically implementing NVMe all-flash only for your hot data, you can guarantee optimal responsiveness for applications and users accessing this critical data. This allows you to retain your existing storage infrastructure as-is without having to force an all-out NVMe upgrade and driving up expenses.
You can leverage data placement intelligence to ensure that latency-sensitive workloads are prioritized on NVMe-based storage devices. This strategic placement of data allows for efficient data access, maximizing the benefits of NVMe’s high-speed capabilities.
Software-defined storage uses automated tiering to analyze data temperature (based on frequency of access) to determine its importance and performance requirements. This classification helps identify data that would benefit from the ultra-fast performance of NVMe storage.
Salient Highlights of Using Software-Defined Storage
- Data tiering using software-defined storage is dynamic, in the sense that as the data usage patterns change in real time, the placement of data is automatically adjusted to suit the right tier.
- The hardware-agnostic nature of software defined storage allows you to tier data across any block storage device/model (SAN, DAS, HCI, JBOD, JBOF, etc.) from any manufacturer within the storage pool.
- To account for the small volume of hot data, you may just need one or two servers with NVMe all-flash drives. This contributes to significant cost savings instead of having to overhauling the entire SAN storage infrastructure.
Embrace NVMe for a Better Tomorrow
Technology is constantly evolving, so future proofing your storage infrastructure is critical. NVMe enables organizations to embrace the latest advancements in storage technology. With its industry-wide adoption and continuous innovation, NVMe ensures that your storage infrastructure remains at the forefront of performance and scalability. With software-defined storage, it is possible to take advantage of your existing infrastructure, integrate NVMe seamlessly, and realize its full potential:
- Minimal to no disruption to application operations and data processing
- No complex infrastructure overhaul
- No significant cost escalation
- No arduous human effort and forklift upgrade
Get ready to unlock a new era of storage efficiency and propel your organization forward with NVMe. Contact DataCore to learn how software-defined storage can help with this technology transformation.
