NVME-oF - NVM Express over Fabrics
NVME-oF enables NVMe message-based commands to transfer data between a host computer and a target solid-state storage device or system over a network such as Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and InfiniBand. Tunneling NVMe commands through an RDMA fabric provides a high throughput and a low latency.
For information on how to configure NVME-oF, please refer to the HowTo Configure NVMe over Fabrics Community post.
The --with-nvmf installation option should not be specified, if nvme-tcp kernel module is used. In this case, the native Inbox nvme-tcp kernel module will be loaded.
This feature is only supported for ConnectX-5 adapter cards family and above.
NVME-oF Target Offload is an implementation of the new NVME-oF standard Target (server) side in hardware. Starting from ConnectX-5 family cards, all regular IO requests can be processed by the HCA, with the HCA sending IO requests directly to a real NVMe PCI device, using peer-to-peer PCI communications. This means that excluding connection management and error flows, no CPU utilization will be observed during NVME-oF traffic.
For instructions on how to configure NVME-oF target offload, refer to HowTo Configure NVME-oF Target Offload Community post.
For instructions on how to verify that NVME-oF target offload is working properly, refer to Simple NVMe-oF Target Offload Benchmark Community post.