1. Factors Driving Enterprise NVMeTM Growth
Sponsored by NVM Express™ organization, the owner of NVMe™, NVMe-oF™ and NVMe-MI™ standards

2. Speaker
Gary Kotzur

3. Overview
With the increased availability and awareness of NVMeTM products, more enterprises are making the transition to NVMe. Join our panel discussion to learn how server and storage vendors are helping make this transition possible.

4. NVMeTM SSD Technology Trends
Lower costs
Natural market decreases
Technology advances
Capacity is increasing
More layers
More levels: TLC  QLC
Die per package increasing
Performance is increasing
Media: SCM
Interface: PCIe ® 3.0  4.0 transition, 5.0 is coming
Power levels are sustaining
Media
Interfaces

5. Addressing Customer Expectation Gaps
Enhanced Serviceability
PCI-SIG® work group added new features
All OS vendors have support plans
Decreased Costs
Infrastructure costs are dropping
Switched and direct connectivity
Modality of device ports
More “Data Protection” Options
Security
Management

6. Expanding Ubiquity
Wide adoption across all segments: Enterprise  Client
NVMeTM support is expanding throughout Enterprise / Data Center products
Native OS and OSV driver support
Increased “Data Protection” options
Native Fabric support  NVMe-oFTM
Increased Media choices  Flash & SCM
In summary  SSDs are converging on NVMe

7. Consolidation SSD Form Factor Incumbent Form Factor adoption: SD, XD
Storage Device Interface
NVMe-oFTM variants
Modality of device ports

8. Challenges  Opportunities
Flash Performance Density
PCIe ® Distance
Computational Storage
Block  Key Value

9. Speaker
Steve McQuerry

10. NVMeTM in Enterprise Storage Arrays Overview
More storage Arrays are being built as all flash platforms for enterprise deployments
These platforms are optimized for performance and capacity
NVMeTM has become a key component when using flash in enterprise products
Many all flash arrays are adopting NVMe as the preferred protocol
NVMe-oFTM connectivity is providing additional benefits of extending the NVMe protocol outside of chassis directly to the client or to expansion shelves

11. NVMeTM Implementation Case Study
We are looking at Pure Storage as a specific case study in the implementation and use of NVMeTM technologies. This is not a product endorsement by NVMe Express.
As all flash became a component in block storage arrays, the initial protocol was still SCSI
NVMe provided significant performance improvements over the SCSI protocol
In order to get the benefits all flash arrays would need to transition users from an end to end SCSI experience to an end to end NVME experience

12. NVMeTM Transports NVMeTM Transports Memory Message Message & Memory
Data & Commands/Responses
use shared memory
Commands/Responses use Capsules Data may use Capsules or Messages
Commands/Responses use Capsules
Data may use Capsules or Shared Memory
Example:
Examples:
Examples:
PCI Express
Fibre Channel, TCP
RDMA
(InfiniBand, RoCE, iWARP)
Fabric Message-Based Transports
Capsule = Encapsulated NVMe Command/Completion within a transport message
Data = Transport data exchange mechanism (if any)

13. NVMeTM Implementation Case Study
The first step to providing NVMeTM capabilities within the Array Chassis
From a buy or build perspective NVMe platform availability was limited until recently
Customers were able to get the benefits of NVMe within the array, but the initiator, fabric, and in some instances expansion shelves were still using SCSI
Controller CPU
PCIe
NVMe
FLASH
Array Chassis

14. NVMeTM over Fabrics Backend Implementation example
The next step was to extend NVMeTM capabilities to the shelves
Transport choices included PCIe or NVMe-oFTM, in the case of Pure Storage we chose NVMe-oF specifically NVMe™/RoCE
This extended the NVMe experience and allowed extra capacity without sacrificing the protocol benefits
NVMe-oF
NVMe-oF
Controller CPU
Shelf CPU
PCIe
PCIe
NVMe
NVMe
FLASH
FLASH
Finally, we are introducing the Direct Flash Shelf, a companion to the FlashArray //XR2, which enables us to extend the benefits of our Direct Flash Modules to capacity points beyond what can fit inside the base array. The Direct Flash Shelf employs a high-performance 50GbE RoCE interconnect which we use as a base for a fully functional NVMe-oF implementation to allow us to expand our capacity by 1 or 2 shelves, each of which can hold 28 direct flash modules.
The direct flash shelf was a first for us in a few ways.  One is that it allowed us to develop an in-house, full NVMe-oF impelementation where we control both ends of the wire. That allowed us to focus on design, implementation, and performance in a controlled environment, and deliver a Pure-quality solution which allows our customers to reap the performance and capacity benefits of new technologies.
In addition, we had to develop a new control plane to provide our expected  level of integration, simplicity, and ease of management for the shelf.
                                                                                
Our next step will be to provide those same benefits directly when we introduce our NVMe-oF front end implementation, which we are working on now and expect to launch later this year.
Array Chassis
Array Shelf

15. NVMeTM over Fabrics Frontend Implementation example
The finial step was to provide an end-to-end NVMeTM experience by exposing the volumes in the NVMe namespaces across the fabric
This provides the host the added benefits of performance and efficiency of NVMe
HOST
CPU
NVMe-oF
NVMe-oF
NVMe-oF
Controller CPU
Shelf CPU
PCIe
PCIe
NVMe
NVMe
FLASH
FLASH
Array Chassis
Array Shelf

16. Summary
When working with an All Flash Array, it makes sense to leverage NVMeTM
Customers are able to absorb NVMe into their environment without making significant changes to their infrastructure
NVMe-oFTM makes it possible to extend the benefits of NVMe outside the chassis and all the way to the host to provide and end-to-end NVMe experience
There is still work to be done on the OS Ecosystem and feature parity for NVMe-oF but the level of customer interest is increasing

17. Questions?