Fibre Channel-NVM Express® Specification Advanced by the Fibre Channel Industry Association

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 07, 2017 -- In a development that highlights the continued innovation of Fibre Channel technology, the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) today announced that the Fibre Channel-NVM Express^® (NVMe) specification is technically stable and nearing completion of letter ballot comment resolution.  

“The ability to transport NVMe over Fibre Channel concurrently with existing SAN traffic allows the massive existing and expanding base of Fibre Channel customers to maximize their investments,” said Mark Jones, president, FCIA, and director, Technical Marketing and Performance, Broadcom Limited. “This emerging specification also demonstrates that Fibre Channel is evolving while continuing to offer significant advantages including data reliability and integrity.”

Faster Flash with NVMe over Fibre Channel
The next big thing in storage is already here with NVMe, which significantly improves performance by reducing latency and enabling high levels of parallelism. NVMe delivers faster flash storage, internal in the storage arrays, and will soon be available for host connectivity. NVMe is already available and supported today over Fibre Channel.

This week in booth #828 at the Flash Memory Summit, the FCIA is conducting a public demonstration of NVMe over Fibre Channel, showcasing how you can concurrently run applications respectively on a Fibre Channel LUN and an NVMe namespace (NSID) with the same host and HBA at the same time with tools for NVMe traffic capture and decoding. The move to NVMe results in faster application completion times.

Leading Panel of Experts
The FCIA is also hosting Session 303-B at Flash Memory Summit on Thursday, August 10, 1:30 pm. – 2:45 p.m. titled “Ultra-Fast NVMe Storage Networks for Next Generation Flash Arrays.” Moderated by J Michel Metz, Office of the CTO, Cisco and board member, FCIA, the following panel of data storage experts will examine how NVMe fits into the datacenter using popular storage networking protocols:

• Curt Beckmann, Product Architect for NVMe over Fibre Channel at Brocade
• Raj Lasange, Technical Director, NetApp
• Dennis Martin, Founder/President, Demartek
• Rupin Mohan, Director, R&D, Chief Technologist (SAN), HPE
• Greg Scherer, VP/CTO, Cavium

“The advancement of the NVMe over Fabric specification is an indication that Fibre Channel technology has a long and innovative future,” said Dennis Martin, founder and President, Demartek and a FCIA panelist at FMS. “When finalized, this new standard promises to increase network performance and lower latency to NVMe native devices as compared to traditional SCSI-based storage devices.”

About FCIA

The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) is a non-profit international organization whose sole purpose is to act as the independent technology and marketing voice of the Fibre Channel industry. We are committed to helping member organizations promote and position Fibre Channel, and to providing a focal point for Fibre Channel information, standards advocacy, and education. FCIA members include manufacturers, system integrators, developers, vendors, industry professionals, and end users. Our member-led working groups and committees focus on creating and championing the Fibre Channel technology roadmaps, targeting applications that include data storage, video, networking, and storage area network (SAN) management. For more info, go to http://www.fibrechannel.org.

Media Contact:			
Linda Capcara			
TechTHiNQ on behalf of FCIA 	
[email protected] 	
Phone: +1.480.229.7090	

Association Contact:
Susan Crolla 		
FCIA Executive Director 
[email protected] 
Phone: +1.952.564.3059