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NVMe-oF: NVMe Storage Over the Network

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NVMe-oF: removing the network latency tax on flash storage

Local NVMe SSDs have latencies of 70–100 µs. Traditional SAN protocols (iSCSI, Fibre Channel) add 500–1000 µs of overhead — turning a 70 µs device into a 1 ms device. For databases, AI training checkpoints, and high-frequency applications, this overhead is unacceptable.

NVMe-over-Fabrics (NVMe-oF, NVMe Specification 1.3+) extends the NVMe command set directly over a network fabric. With NVMe/RDMA, the latency overhead is just 10–20 µs — near-local performance at network scale.

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