UNH-IOL to Present on NVMe-MI

By Paula Bernier
Executive Editor, TMC

The Flash Memory Summit 2017 will take place next week in Santa Clara, Calif. And the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory will be there talking about conformance testing for Non Volatile Memory Express Fabrics, aka NVMe.

At the event, the independent provider of testing and standards conformance services to the networking industry will take part in a presentation on NVMe-MI. The MI stands for management interface. Teledyne LeCroy will also be involved in the presentation, which is scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 9 at 3:20 p.m.

NVMe is a PCI (News - Alert) Express-based interface used for flash memory. It’s been in the market for more than five years. And it has a very simple command set. Greg Schere, CTO for Ethernet and fibre channel adapters at Cavium, explained all this in an interview with me in May.

As UNH-IOL (News - Alert) said in a statement it issued yesterday, NVMe-MI helps simplify management of enterprise storage. “Instead of requiring new management software implementation for each OS, NVMe-MI operates out of band, simplifying the process to create and deploy management applications,” the Durham-based lab noted. “Through a standardized interface, users can expect the same base set of features across products from disparate suppliers, making the switch to NVMe even easier.”

Addressing test and validation for NVMe was a founding priority for the NVMe-MI workgroup of the NVM Express organization, UNH-IOL added. The lab also noted that it already has hosted seven NVMe Plugfests involving testing over the past six years. And it’ll host another one Oct. 30 through Nov. 2.

As for the Flash Memory Summit at which UNH-IOL will speak next week, that runs from Aug. 8 through Aug. 10 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

“NVMe is on a faster growth trajectory than ever before. Companies are now testing feature-rich NVMe SSDs that include unique enterprise and client capabilities and implement the NVMe-MI specification,” said David Woolf, senior engineer, Datacenter Technologies at the UNH-IOL. “Demand for the NVMe-oF specification tracks increased, signaling to us that the industry is moving quickly from trials to real live deployments that will require conformance and interoperability testing at our next plugfest.”