Paper Title: Discovery Automation for NVMe IP-Based SANs

Paper Abstract: NVMe over IP-Based fabrics, such as NVMe/TCP and NVMe/RDMA, has the potential to provide significant benefits in application environments ranging from the Edge to the Data Center. However, before we can fully unlock the potential of NVMe over IP-Based fabrics, we first need to overcome its discovery problem. This discovery problem, specific to IP based fabrics, can result in the need for Host administrators to explicitly configure each Host to access each of the NVM subsystems in their environment. In addition, any time an NVM Subsystem interface is added or removed, the Host administrator may need to explicitly update the configuration of impacted hosts. This process does not scale when more than a few Host and NVM subsystem interfaces are in use. Also, due to the de-centralized nature of this process, it also adds complexity when trying to use NVMe over IP-Based fabrics in environments that require a high-degrees of automation. For these and other reasons, several companies have been collaborating on innovations that simplify and automate the discovery process used with NVMe IP based SANs.

Paper Author: Curtis Ballard, Technologist, HPE

Author Bio: Curtis Ballard is a Distinguished Technologist with Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the HPE Storage Organization. He works on emerging storage technologies and industry engagement. Curtis is on the NVM Express Board of Directors, the SNIA Technical Council, and is the vice-chair of the INCITS/T10 SCSI Storage Interfaces Technical Committee. Curtis has worked on storage products across the industry including host drivers, interface ASICS, standalone drives, and complex storage systems and has over 40 storage related patents