In a Fibre Channel environment, NVMe-oF technology supports the NVMe-oF communication protocol on FC-SAN (Fibre Channel storage area network) using the existing Fibre Channel network devices.
In an Ethernet environment, NVMe-oF technology using TCP/IP is called NVMe/TCP. NVMe/TCP supports the NVMe-oF communication protocol on IP-SAN using the existing Ethernet network devices.
To configure a system consisting of a host and a storage system using the NVMe-oF communication protocol, register a logical volume of the storage system as a namespace on the NVM subsystem, and then configure a data I/O route from the host to the logical volume.
The following configuration shows a connection between the host and the storage system using NVMe-oF and NVMe/TCP.
Conventional Fibre Channel and iSCSI require an LU mapping for a port to manage an access route between the host and the logical volume. NVMe-oF, on the other hand, requires the following system components to be configured on the storage system between the host and the logical volume.
- NVM subsystem
- A flash memory storage control system that supports the NVMe-oF communication protocol with one or more namespaces, and one or more communication ports (NVM subsystem ports). A default name that is automatically defined by the system cannot be specified.
These characters cannot be used for the NVM subsystem: \ / : , ; * ? " < > |
- Namespace
- A flash memory space formatted into a logical block.
These characters cannot be used for the namesapce nickname: \ / : , ; * ? " < > |
- NVM subsystem port
- An FC port set to NVMe mode.
- Host identification (host NQN)
- Host name qualifier.
These characters cannot be used for the host NQN nickname: \ / : , ; * ? " < > |
If the specified host NQN is registered on multiple NVM subsystems, the setting applies to all NVM subsystems.
- Host-namespace path
- Access permission to the namespace for each host NQN registered on the NVM subsystem.