There is an age-old challange in the data center when storage in configured as captive to servers. Over time, the available storage space is not used and storage resources are wasted. New approaches using Software Defined Storage (SDS) have tried to mitigate the issue, but have not been able to do so completely. Fundamentally, there's a reason why storage area networks (SAN) were created and many customers still use shared storage arrays to optimize the storage footprint and utilization. But some belive SAN managment is to complex and shared storage is a thing of the past (not that I totally agree). The question for some administrators and architects is, how do you disaggregate the storage from the server and yet simplify access and control?
With the advent of new technologies like the NVMe language for storage and NVMe over Fabric infrastructure, there may be a better way in the future. Marvell has created a new NVMe over Fabric (NVMe-oF) converter controller for NVMe disks.
This new technology allows a single NVMe storage device to be access via an Ethernet netowrk and allow NVMe commands from the server (or controller) to be processed directly over the Ethernet Fabric. Leveraging this technology, NVMe storage can be disagregated from the physical servers, and thus the amount of storage made available can be optimized for the environment. Individual servers can access individual drives over a high speed, low latency network that carries NVMe traffic. For more details, watch this video on Marvell's YouTube channel..
If you have questions about this technology, contact the HPE team at Marvell via email at hpesolutions@marvell.com.