What is an NVMe? Most businesses rely on some form of critical data to function successfully, and thus they need effective and efficient systems for managing their storage. NVMe, or Non-Volatile Memory Express, is the industry standard for enterprise and non-volatile memory-based storage solutions. Essentially, NVMe is a new storage access and transport protocol for flash and next-generation SSDs (solid-state drives) that delivers the highest throughput and incredible speed for all types of enterprise workloads. It operates across the PCIe (peripheral component interconnect express) bus, which allows the drives to act more like the fast memory that they truly are, rather than like the hard disks they imitate.
While NVMe is relatively new, it is packed with features and is also highly scalable. Although traditional hard drives are ideal and recommended for less-used data, NVMe has many advantages compared to legacy protocols. NVMe was designed for both enterprise and client applications needing acceleration in critical data as it eliminates bottlenecks and meets the very demanding and time-sensitive requirements of cloud, internet portal data centers, and high-performance computing environments. Apart from data centers and enterprises, NVMe offers vast potentials in entertainment, gaming, and next-generation automobile applications.
NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) flash storage has become the go-to enterprise storage format of choice for businesses, and with good reason. Some of the benefits of NVMe include:
NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is two to seven times faster than SATA SSDs (serial AT attachment solid-state drives). Traditional hard drives using the SCSI (small computer system interface) protocol had one queue for commands. NVMe is designed to have up to 64 THOUSAND queues, each capable of 64 THOUSAND commands at the same time. Moreso, NVMe is capable of delivering a sustained read-write speed of 2000MB per second, which is much faster than the SATA SSD.
NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) and M.2 memory drives are becoming increasingly popular and more affordable and are also on the verge of becoming the standard recommendation for PC builds. While NVMe is a connection type for storage devices and tells you how fast the drive can operate, M2 is different. M2 - formerly known as the Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF) - is only a form factor and doesn’t provide any other information about the device. SATA (serial AT attachment) is what’s most commonly used now to connect drives to a PC, and is made up of both a connector as well as a bus interface. It is the protocol used to send data between the drive and the PC. In contrast, M2 plugs into the peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) bus interface. However, the M2 is only a connector. NVMe has a fast enough and low enough latency to connect to the PCIe bus interface via the M2 connector.
High performance, high speed storage is becoming more important than ever as evolving technologies such as Internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain require vast amounts of data to be analyzed. Data centers can rely on NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) because it addresses the demanding and time-sensitive requirements of high-performance computing environments, cloud, portal data centers, etc. With NVMe, bottlenecks are eliminated and rising data demands are easily managed. Compared to SAS (serial-attached small computer system interface) or SATA (serial AT attachment), NVMe consumes very few CPU cycles and its enabled infrastructure will likely yield maximum returns for your business. In addition, NVMe can be employed not only for data backup but also for replication within compliance windows. NVMe also enables you to make fast, real-time data-based decisions that are suitable for organizations working with extensive workloads.
What's more, NVMe works with all major operating systems, regardless of form factor, by directly communicating with the system CPU. These operating environments include Linux, Windows, Mac OS, and Chrome OS. Beyond having a maximum queue depth, NVMe involves no locking during parallelism and multiple threading. Compared to legacy systems, NVMe is easier to use, more efficient, less complex, as well as more serviceable.
NVMe is still not as widely supported as you may think. However, it is making a big impact on data-driven businesses that contend with the perpetual growth of data. It is clear that NVMe’s rich set of unique features help to avoid the bottlenecks from all traditional scale-up database applications to emerging computing architectures, in order to meet new data demands. To remain competitive, businesses and organizations in enterprise environments are heavily investing in NVMe, which is quickly becoming the next cutting-edge technology.
