NVMe storage adapters

Starting with DPM R4.2, system administrators can enable partitions to use NVMe storage on a system that has IBM® Adapter for NVMe1.1 features installed. These features are available on IBM LinuxONE (LinuxONE) systems only.

Non-Volatile Memory Express® (NVMe) storage adapters use the PCI Express (PCIe) protocol to provide high-speed storage within a system. Each NVMe adapter consists of two pieces of hardware: an IBM-supplied carrier card installed in a system I/O drawer, and the solid state drive (SSD) that customers purchase. IBM service representatives install the NVMe SSDs in the carrier cards after the system is delivered to the customer site.

DPM automatically discovers any NVMe carrier cards that are installed in the system, and can detect whether an SSD is installed in each carrier card. Through Connect Storage and Storage Cards in the Configure Storage task, system administrators can view NVMe adapters in the visual display of system frames and I/O drawers, and view specific details about each adapter; for example, you can tell whether the carrier card has an SSD installed. They also can use the Manage Adapters task to view NVMe adapters, but these adapters are displayed in that task only when an SSD is installed in a carrier card. You cannot use either task to reconfigure NVMe storage adapters; reconfiguration requires properly removing the carrier card and its SSD from the drawer and reinstalling them in a different physical location, as instructed by a service representative.

Through Request Storage in the Configure Storage task, system administrators can create a storage group containing one or more available NVMe SSDs that are installed in carrier cards. You can define these SSDs as either boot or data volumes.

To enable partitions to use NVMe storage, use either the New Partition task or Partition Details task to attach the storage group to the partition. You can attach one or more NVMe storage groups, and select an SSD volume in an attached NVMe storage group as the boot volume for an operating system or hypervisor. Note that only one partition can use an NVMe storage group at any given time; an NVMe storage group cannot be shared. However, a partition that has attached NVMe storage groups can also have attached FICON® and FCP storage groups, and FCP tape links.