NVMe-KV Drives (New Feature of NVMe 2.0)

[G-A-S-T]

Hello

NVMe 2.0 allows a drive to be used as KV (key-value) storage instead of a block device. Is this feature available on all drives that support NVMe 2.0 or is it an optional feature and these drives are advertised differently?

Thank you.

 

[Nobu]

* The first category of changes is New Features that are optional capabilities. These features may
be implemented by a revision 2.0 compatible device based on market need.
* The second category is changes from past behavior. One set of changes here includes
extensions of past functionality.
* The final category of changes are incompatible changes from past behavior, or new mandatory
requirements for how a feature shall be implemented (where there may have been multiple
reasonable interpretations of previous specification language).

https://nvmexpress.org/specification/changes-in-nvm-express-revision-2-0/

KV is in the first category, so you'll probably have to check if the drive (or chipset--one or the other, not sure how that works) supports it.

 

[G-A-S-T]

Thanks, I thought so. Does anyone know of a commercially available SSD with NVMe-KV support?

 

[mwroobel]

We evaluated (under NDA at the time, I think back in 2021) the KV-SSD from Samsung. Was it more efficient than block/object storage, yes. Was it worth the price they were suggesting for the Host with QVL'd drives/controllers, at the time no and they didn't come up with anything (at the time) to make it anything (for us at least) more than a curio. With more mature hardware/software it makes a lot of sense, especially for workloads with extreme numbers of small files or audio/video files where you don't have to deal with fixed block size.

 

[G-A-S-T]

We evaluated (under NDA at the time, I think back in 2021) the KV-SSD from Samsung.

I wrote to Samsung asking for a commercially available KV-SSD, and they replied that the demand for the KV-SSD was not high, so they put it on hold...

 

[mwroobel]

I wrote to Samsung asking for a commercially available KV-SSD, and they replied that the demand for the KV-SSD was not high, so they put it on hold...

Like anything else, it is an enterprise-focused feature set that will filter down to prosumer and then consumer with the proper firmware and software support (If priced reasonably.)