UNH-IOL Offers NVMe-oF Testing, Software, List

By Paula Bernier
Executive Editor, TMC

The University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab is now offering NVMe-oF testing services and related resources. This leading facility, based in Durham, is an NBASE-T member. 

NVMe-oF stands for Non-Volatile Memory Express over Fabrics. This standard enables data centers to access flash and solid-state drives over Ethernet and Fibre Channel networks. That allows them to run applications using a much larger storage pool than is possible with NVMe alone.

But in announcing this news, UNH-IOL (News - Alert) – which in addition to the testing services is offering software and an integrators list for NVMe-oF – notes that this new standard builds on NMVe. And it points out that NMVe is important because it provides a low-latency, simplified, and standardized way to connect PCIe SSDs and use them in flash memory applications.

Also, UNH-IOL says its NVMe-oF integrators list includes Cavium, Mellanox, and Toshiba (News - Alert). Cavium demonstrated NVMe-oF concurrently over RoCE and iWARP on its FastlinQ 45000/41000 Ethernet NICs at August’s 2017 Flash Memory Summit.

And UNH-IOL has hosted seven NVMe Plugfests, also known as group testing events in the past few years. At these events storage vendors test against NVMe standards to qualify them for the NVMe Integrators List. 

As noted above, UNH-IOL is a member of the NBASE-T Alliance. NBASE-T is an IEEE (News - Alert) Ethernet signaling standard that allows existing Cat5e and Cat6 twisted pair copper to deliver 1 gigabit per second connectivity at lengths of up to 100 meters. Peter Jones, the NBASE-T Alliance chairman and a principal engineer at Cisco (News - Alert), notes that: “Previously, a bandwidth upgrade would have required organizations to engage in costly, disruptive construction in order rip and replace their cables. But today, NBASE-T technology is helping them get more speed from their existing networks with a simple equipment upgrade.”