NVMe 2.0 specification released

[illegalwater]

Quote

Version 2.0 of the NVM Express specification has been released, keeping up the roughly two year cadence for the storage interface that is now a decade old. Like other NVMe spec updates, version 2.0 comes with a variety of new features and functionality for drives to implement (usually as optional features). But the most significant change—and the reason this is called version 2.0 instead of 1.5—is that the spec has been drastically reorganized to better fit the broad scope of features that NVMe now encompasses. From its humble beginnings as a block storage protocol operating over PCI Express, NVMe has grown to also become one of the most important networked storage protocols, and now also supports storage paradigms that are entirely different from the hard drive-like block storage abstraction originally provided by NVMe.

 

Instead of a base specification for typical PCIe SSDs and a separate NVMe over Fabrics spec, version 2.0 is designed to be a more modular specification and has been split into several documents. The base specification now covers both locally-attached devices and NVMeoF, but more abstractly—enough has been moved out of the base spec that it is no longer sufficient to define all of the functionality needed to implement a simple SSD. Real devices will also need to refer to at least one Transport spec and at least one Command Set spec. For typical consumer SSDs, that means using the PCIe transport spec and the block storage command set. Other transport options currently include networked NVMe over Fabrics using either TCP or RDMA. Other command set options include Zoned Namespace and Key-Value command sets. We already covered Zoned Namespaces in depth when it was approved for inclusion last year. The three standardized command sets (block, zoned, key-value) cover different points along the spectrum from simple SSDs with thin abstractions over the underlying flash, to relatively complicated, smart drives that take on some of the storage management tasks that would have traditionally been handled by software on the host system.
 
Many of the new features in NVMe 2.0 are minor extensions to existing functionality, making those features more useful and more broadly usable. For example, partitioning a device's storage into NVM Sets and Endurance Groups was introduced in NVMe 1.4, but the spec didn't say how those divisions would be created; that configuration would either need to be hard-coded by the drive's firmware, or handled with vendor-specific commands. NVMe 2.0 adds a standard capacity management mechanism for endurance groups and NVM sets to be allocated, and also adds another layer of partitioning (Domains) for the sake of massive NVMeoF storage appliances that needed more tools for slicing up their pool of available storage, or isolating the performance impacts of different users on shared drives or arrays.

It's a lot of technical stuff that goes over my head, but still cool to see.

 

Source

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16702/nvme-20-specification-released

[StDragon]

Oh boy. So this could be a real headache for enterprise solutions as you've got to know exactly what the vendor implemented with NVMe 2.0. Though I don't see this being an issue in the consumer space.

[Hassan170]

12 hours ago, illegalwater said:

It's a lot of technical stuff that goes over my head, but still cool to see.

 

Source

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16702/nvme-20-specification-released

So uhh what can we expect to see on the consumer side of things?

[LAwLz]

12 hours ago, StDragon said:

Oh boy. So this could be a real headache for enterprise solutions as you've got to know exactly what the vendor implemented with NVMe 2.0. Though I don't see this being an issue in the consumer space.

It won't be an issue for enterprises because enterprise customers buys already built solutions directly from manufacturers. They don't buy loose parts and build it themselves. 

Besides, you can always just ask your sales person. 

[RejZoR]

While HDD support is a bit meh and may only really be useful in datacenters where more direct data access is useful over shuffling it through controllers, I'm more interested in ZNS. Zoned Namespace should improve performance and durability of SSD's. We'll see how that helps consumers.

 

I can't wait for SSD's on PCIe 4.0 to get cheaper enough that I'll grab a 4TB and stick it in as main drive as replacement for current Sammy 850 Pro 2TB on SATA. There is really no point in doing anything else for me because even SATA SSD works so great and has for many years now. But I guess when I do, DirectStorage will actually be used by games...

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

It won't be an issue for enterprises because enterprise customers buys already built solutions directly from manufacturers. They don't buy loose parts and build it themselves. 

Besides, you can always just ask your sales person. 

Only place I can see it being a bit of a problem is Open Source Software Defined Storage solutions like Ceph or Gluster where you might need to know the capabilities of the SSD options that Dell/HPE/Supermicro offer within the QVL options. However that's already a thing when picking NICs as you typically get 2 or 3 Mellanox options, Broadcom and some others like Xilinx.