NVMe over Fabric solutions displayed at Flash Memory Summit

The NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) specification is an emerging technology that gives data centre networks unprecedented access to NVMe SSD storage. It delivers efficient scaling of NVMe-based SSDs over data centre fabrics including Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) networks (iWARP and RoCE), as well as, fibre channel. This enables faster, more scalable connections between servers and storage as well as between storage controllers and NVMe enclosures.

Cavium is leading the transition to NVMe over Fabrics by enabling a broad range of high-performance solutions that seamlessly transition customer infrastructure and applications from legacy storage to current and next-gen flash/NVMe, and is the only solution supplier offering both NVMe-oF over Universal RDMA and Fibre Channel Adapters.

The Flash Memory Summit 2017 featured the latest technology trends, the most exciting products, and the broadest coverage of a rapidly expanding market around flash, fabrics and end-to-end solutions. Cavium participation in Flash Memory Summit 2017 included multiple live performance and interop demonstrations, speaking sessions by industry experts and product showcases. Key demonstrations and engagements included:

• Demo: Breakthrough performance from an end-to-end FC-NVMe solution with QLogic Gen 6 Fibre Channel delivering more than 2 million NVMe IOPS on the innovative SPDK-based software-defined storage framework at Cavium booth 815.
• Demo: Industry’s only solution that delivers technology choice and investment protection to customers with concurrent RoCE and iWARP transports for NVMe over Fabrics at Cavium booth 815.
• Demo: Concurrent FCP and FC-NVMe end-to-end multi-vendor interoperability demonstration featuring QLogic Gen 6 Fibre Channel at FCIA booth 828.
• Breakout Session: 'Accelerate Access to Networked Flash with FC-NVMe' at Forum V-31 on 10th August at 8:30am.
• Expert Panel: 'Ultra-Fast NVMe Storage Networks for Next Generation Flash Array' Session 303-B at Forum W-32 on 10th August at 1:30pm.
• Expert Panel: 'NVMe over Fabrics Does Networking Part 2b' at Forum A-12 on 8th August at 5:00pm.

Cavium QLogic NVMe over Fibre Channel (FC-NVMe) solution
Next-gen data intensive workloads utilise low latency NVMe flash-based storage to meet ever increasing user demand. By combining the lossless, highly deterministic nature of Fibre Channel with NVMe, FC-NVMe delivers the performance, application response time, and scalability needed for next-gen data centres, while leveraging existing Fibre Channel infrastructure.

Currently shipping QLogic 2690 Series of Enhanced Gen 5 and 2700 Series of Gen 6 Fibre Channel adapters are FC-NVMe ready and are being evaluated in FC-NVMe fabrics by multiple customers and partners across the industry.

Cavium FastLinQ NVMe over Ethernet Universal RDMA (NVMe-oF) solution
Driven by the performance demands of NVMe, high-performance, low latency networking is a fundamental requirement for a fabric to scale out. Ethernet-based RDMA fabrics with their exceptional low latency and offload capabilities will become a popular choice for NVMe over Fabrics. Cavium FastLinQ 45000/41000 Series Ethernet NICs support Universal RDMA (RoCE, RoCEv2 and iWARP concurrently) and deliver the ultimate choice to customers for scaling out NVMe over a general purpose Ethernet fabric.

Cavium FastLinQ 40000 series 10/25/40/50/100GbE, QLogic 2690 series Enhanced Gen 5 16GFC and 2700 series Gen 6 32GFC adapters are available from Cavium and multiple OEMs and ODMs.