Dell PowerFlex 4.6.x Technical Overview

NVMe over TCP overview

PowerFlex supports the NVMe over TCP storage protocol for frontend connectivity. With NVMe over TCP, PowerFlex provides a simple, optimized, and cost-effective way to consume storage.

The following are the benefits of using NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF):

• NVMe-oF is the new standard protocol for storage, with a growing adoption in the industry.
• NVMe-oF is supported by multiple operating systems and does not require any host agent on the storage.

The following are the benefits of using TCP transport:

• TCP provides a standard, common, and interoperable solution.
• TCP allows the use of existing networks and hardware.
• TCP delivers excellent performance.

Hosts can use standard NVMe over TCP operating system drivers to connect to PowerFlex. These drivers are available in mainstream Linux distributions and in VMware ESXi.

The following figures show how PowerFlex SDC and NVMe over TCP are used on the host. NVMe over TCP uses a newly created NVMe target, the SDT. The SDT runs on the storage side while there is no PowerFlex component running on the host side.

NVMe over TCP deployment with PowerFlex enables you to:

• Deploy using PowerFlex ManagerPowerFlex storage-only nodes
• Use two-layer deployment
• Work with native operating system drivers and does not require proprietary host agents
• Use the following supported operating systems:
  • VMware ESXi 7.0U 3f (Dell Technologies recommends using the latest release) and VMware ESXi 8.0 (Dell Technologies recommends using the latest release)
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, SLES 15 SP5, with the x86_64 with 5.14.21-150500.55.36-default

  All other Linux operating systems are in technology preview state and can be run in testing scenarios.

  Technology preview features are not fully supported and mya not be functionally complete. These features are not suitable for deployment in production. However, these features are provided to the customer as a courtesy
  and the primary goal is for the features to gain wider exposure with the goal of full support in the future. Customers may find these features useful in a non-production environment. Customers are encouraged to provide feedback and
  functionality suggestions for a technology preview feature before it becomes fully supported.

  For the most updated list, see the PowerFlexsupport matrix.

• Co-exist with PowerFlex SDC. SDC and NVMe over TCP can be used on the same cluster.

  The only exception is that both SDC and NVMe hosts cannot share the same volume at the same time.

PowerFlex supports NVMe reservations (SCSI-3 equivalent) with NVMe over TCP.