Got SPDK Questions?

We kicked-off our 2020 webcast program by diving into how The Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK) fits in the NVMe landscape. Our SPDK experts, Jim Harris and Ben Walker, did an outstanding job presenting on this topic. In fact, their webcast, “Where Does SPDK Fit in the NVMe-oF Landscape” received at 4.9 rating on a scale of 1-5 from the live audience. If you missed the webcast, I highly encourage you to watch it on-demand. We had some great questions from the attendees and here are answers to them all:

Q. Which CPU architectures does SPDK support?

A. SPDK supports x86, ARM and Power CPU architectures.

Q. Are there plans to extend SPDK support to additional architectures?

A. If someone has interest in using SPDK on additional architectures, they may develop the necessary SPDK patches and submit them for review.  Please note that SPDK relies on the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) for some aspects of CPU architecture support, so DPDK patches would also be required.

Q. Will SPDK NVMe-oF support QUIC?  What advantages does it have compared to RDMA and TCP transports?

A. SPDK currently has implementations for all of the transports that are part of the NVMe and related specifications – RDMA, TCP and Fibre Channel (target only).  If NVMe added QUIC (a new UDP-based transport protocol for the Internet) as a new transport, SPDK would likely add support. QUIC could be a more efficient transport than TCP, since it is a reliable transport based on multiplexed connections over UDP.

On that note, the SNIA Networking Storage Forum will be hosting a webcast on April 2, 2020. “QUIC – Will it Replace TCP/IP?” You can register for it here.

Q. How do I map a locally attached NVMe SSD to an NVMe-oF subsystem?

A. Use the bdev_nvme_attach_controller RPC to create SPDK block devices for the NVMe namespaces. You can then attach those block devices to an existing subsystem using the nvmf_subsystem_add_ns RPC. You can find additional details on SPDK nvmf RPCs here.

Q. How can I present a regular file as a block device over NVMe-oF?

A. Use the bdev_aio_create RPC to create an SPDK block device for the desired file. You can then attach this block device to an existing subsystem using the nvmf_subsystem_add_ns RPC.  You can find additional details on SPDK nvmf RPCs here.

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