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  • 1.  NVMe-FC?

    Posted Mon September 28, 2020 03:31 PM
    My FlashSystem people out there: question for you! 

    Have you implemented NVMe-FC or doing any early evaluation testing? Thoughts? 


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    FAHIMA
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  • 2.  RE: NVMe-FC?

    Posted Fri November 06, 2020 06:14 AM
    Hi,

    We have sold/implemented a number of IBM NVMe based storage solutions to our customers over the last few months, mostly V7000 (before FS rebranding) and FS9150s.

    So far, performance improvements over their old storage are great, and native data reduction ratios are as we expected them to be (when not using DRPs).

    Regards

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    Darren Sanders
    Technical Architect - Data Protection & Storage
    Celerity Ltd

    http://www.celerity-uk.com
    www.linkedin.com/in/darren-sanders-a8770a4
    #ibmchampion storage
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: NVMe-FC?

    Posted Mon November 09, 2020 01:54 AM
    Darren, Fahima asking for host to storage NVMe over Fibre Channel connectivity. 
    We do some tests with RoCE in 2019. But Suse wasn't reliable on these days.
    We are planning to do some tests on vmware 7, LPE350002 hba's, Gen6 san switches and FS7200.

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    NEZIH BOYACIOGLU
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: NVMe-FC?

    Posted Tue November 10, 2020 03:32 AM
    Hi, we have done some test
    1. make sure the host HBA have NVMe protocol enabled in its firmware, might even need an update of firmware
    2. most likely you will not see any huge difference in performance between NVMe and SCSI protocol on the IBM FlashSystem, as speed of light is speed of light.
    3. The improvement is on Host side, less CPU usage, and possibility for the host to load the FC card to the fully possible. Depend on more questions avail on name enabled hba's

    //Roger

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    ROGER ERIKSSON
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: NVMe-FC?

    Posted Tue November 10, 2020 10:59 AM
    All,

    IBM Flashsystems and Brocade/Broadcom is currently finalizing our NVMe/FC-VMware 7-FS9200 testing with Emulex Gen7 FC host adapters and Brocade/IBM Gen7 FC switches at the IBM Washington System Center.  The results will be published in an upcoming ESG whitepaper. 

    We are seeing some very good results from the testing.  As Roger has mentioned, the host sees quite a bit of the value but if a user can see a significant improvement in transaction processing with improve overall system efficiency, I think they will see the benefit for moving to NVMe over FC.

    We will post the link to the paper here as soon as it is published and feel free to let us know how your NVMe testing goes if you are comfortable with that.  

    Regards,
    Brian Larsen
    Director, Partner Business Development
    Broadcom



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    Brian Larsen
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    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: NVMe-FC?

    Posted Tue November 10, 2020 07:31 PM
    Edited by FAHIMA Tue November 10, 2020 07:31 PM
    Thank you for the reply, Darren. As the team has been replying above, we have been doing some 3rd party testing & internal testing and curious as to what folks are seeing IRL, on production sites. I have posted some performance papers conducted by the broader technical teams on this site, and we look forward to more feedback in order to bring more real-world context/production stage input.

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    FAHIMA
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    Original Message