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NVMe transport protocol in IBM Elastic Storage System 3200
The IBM Elastic Storage System 3200 systems use the Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe) drive
transport protocol.
• NVMe is designed specifically for flash technologies. It is a faster and less complicated storage drive
transport protocol than SAS.
• The NVMe-attached drives support multiple queues so that each CPU core can communicate directly
with the drive. This avoids the latency and overhead of core-to-core communication to give the best
performance.
• NVMe offers better performance and lower latencies exclusively for solid-state drives through multiple
I/O queues and other enhancements.
• High-performance IBM Spectrum Scale RAID supports the following RAID code options:
3WayReplication, 4WayReplication, 8+2p, and 8+3p.
• The NVMe transport protocol supports industry standard NVMe flash drives.
Enterprise-level software and support
IBM Elastic Storage System 3200 consists of two I/O server canisters that run the IBM Spectrum Scale
software, which is a part of the IBM Spectrum Storage family. For more information about the IBM
Spectrum Scale capabilities, see IBM Spectrum Scale.
Enterprise-level software and support are available based on the IBM Spectrum Scale software stack.
System topology
The following figure shows high-level architecture and topology.
I/O Canister Node1
Figure 5. IBM Elastic Storage System 3200 high-level architecture and topology
EMS node
A POWER9 EMS node (5105-22E) is a management server that is required for each ESS system of one or
more building blocks.
You need a POWER9 EMS node as a part of your ESS system. The POWER9 EMS node is ordered with the
initial building block although you can use an existing customer system. The additional building blocks
20 IBM Elastic Storage System 3200: Hardware Planning and Installation Guide
24 PCle4 x2
Boot Drv
Boot Drv
Midplane
I/O Canister Node 2
24 PCle4 x2
Boot Drv
Boot Drv
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