How NVMe tamed the cowboy world of the flash card

It all started with flash devices upsetting the cosy disk world. Flash was faster than disk at responding to IO requests, if not at streaming data, and the easiest way to put flash drives, solid state drives, into servers and storage arrays was to use disk drive bays and interfaces such as SAS and SATA. This was practical but …

[Anonymous Coward]

dirty consumer here

When will NVMe come to laptops?

[Trevor_Pott]

Re: dirty consumer here

October.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not entirely wrapped-up

You're correct that NVMe provides a means of using an inbox standard driver with NVMe compliant controllers. But it doesn't entirely eliminate driver proliferation.

Vendors are looking at ways to get better performance than can be found using NVMe as specified. Therefore, you will find that product will ship that can be run with the inbox device driver and also with a proprietary driver that implements product specific and proprietary techniques to squeeze the last ounce of performance out of a product.

[Alex McDonald 1]

Also see this [SNIA work & tutorials on NVMe].

This is good too; [A Beginner’s Guide to NVMe] by J Metz, a member of the SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum.

[Anonymous Coward]

And then there's Dell

Who for God knows what reason decided that their latest generation of servers (PowerEdge 730) wouldn't be certified for NVMe. Oh no, for that you need the 730xd. So last generation's 720 gladly accepts NVMe cards but a 730 won't, at least if you want support. All in the fine print mind you.

Asked a Dell rep at an event I went to introducing the new servers why they had made that decision (which he clearly failed to mention during the presentation). His answer was that anyone wanting NVMe wanted more disk drive slots too. Morons.