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How to get the full benefits from NVMe flash storage
This article is part of the Storage issue of April 2018, Vol. 17, No. 2
Nonvolatile memory express is a new standard designed for flash and memory-based storage. As all-flash arrays start to support this new technology, vendors will swap SAS-based flash drives with NVMe-based drives. However, the SAS-based, all-flash systems in most data centers already provide more performance than required. In order to take full advantage of NVMe flash storage, data centers must rethink the design of those systems and consider implementing new techniques such as quality of service. The primary impact of NVMe in an all-flash system is not necessarily an increase in raw performance. NVMe is an interface and protocol, while the flash on the drive is still the same as the flash on a SAS-based drive. What NVMe provides is latency reduction. NVMe supports a much higher number of command queues than SCSI and more commands per queue. The net effect is NVMe flash storage can handle more workloads and a greater variety of them at the same time. Designing for NVMe Conventional wisdom targets NVMe-based systems at database ...
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