Ceph NVMe-oF gateway (Technology Preview)

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Storage administrators can install and configure an NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) gateway for an IBM Storage Ceph cluster. With the Ceph NVMe-oF gateway, you can effectively run a fully integrated block storage infrastructure with all features and benefits of a conventional Storage Area Network (SAN).

Note: The NVMe gateway supports VMware vSphere APIs (VAAI), which includes support for vmotion, compare and write, unmap, and write zero.

Important: Technology Preview features are not supported with IBM production service level agreements (SLAs), might not be functionally complete, and IBM does not recommend using them for production. These features provide early access to upcoming product features, enabling customers to test functionality and provide feedback during the development process.

Traditionally, block-level access to a Ceph storage cluster has been limited to QEMU and librbd, which is a key enabler for adoption within OpenStack environments. Starting from IBM Storage Ceph 7, block-level access to the Ceph storage cluster can take advantage of the NVMe-oF standard to provide data storage.

The NVMe-oF gateway integrates IBM Storage Ceph with the NVMe over TCP (NVMe/TCP) protocol to provide an NVMe/TCP target that exports RADOS Block Device (RBD) images. The NVMe/TCP protocol allows clients, which are known as initiators, to send NVMe-oF commands to storage devices, which are known as targets, over an Internet Protocol network. Initiators can be Linux clients, and/or VMWare clients. For VMWare clients, the NVMe/TCP volumes are shown as VMFS Datastore and for Linux clients, the NVMe/TCP volumes are shown as block devices.

For more information about the NVMe over Fabrics protocol, see NVMe over Fabrics.