Broadcom Inc., NetApp, and VMware are demonstrating an NVMe over Fibre Channel (NVMe/FC) solution delivering the next level of storage performance required by real-time applications for artificial intelligence, machine learning, and real-time analytics.  The Broadcom, NetApp, and VMware demonstration in NetApp Booth 1036 at VMworld shows:

• NVMe over Fibre Channel running on VMware vSphere
• Building an NVMe namespace on the NetApp Array for a Windows Virtual Machine, a SUSE Virtual Machine, and a Redhat Virtual Machine
• Building a Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK)
• Installing VMs on a NVMe/FC Name Space from an ISO on a SCSI FCP LUN, showing concurrent NVMe/FC and SCSI FCP on the same infrastructure

The demo consists of Emulex® LPe32002 Gen 6 HBAs, NetApp AFF A300 all-flash storage array with pre-release ONTAP, and Brocade® Gen 6 switch with a pre-release version of vSphere code¹.
Key Advantages of NVMe over Fibre Channel include:

• Highest performance:  NVMe over Fibre Channel delivers 50% more IOPs and 30% lower latency over a like SCSI solution on the AFF A700 NetApp array, as measured and validated by Demartek. See the Demartek report for more information.
• Seamlessly extends customer's existing SAN infrastructure for Real-Time Applications:  with concurrent SCSI and NVMe over Fibre Channel support.
• Purpose-built for storage:  NVMe over Fibre Channel is lossless and can handle the scalability requirements of next-generation applications including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL), Real-time Analytics and existing mission-critical applications.
• Leverages the most secure Fabric platform:  NVMe over Fibre Channel is the proven network for mission-critical data.

"NVMe over Fibre Channel has emerged as the preeminent NVMe-oF protocol. It delivers proven, low-latency performance running over bullet-proof Fibre Channel networks to support existing applications and emerging workloads such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning and data analytics. VMware plays a critical role by enabling customers to take advantage of this next level of performance."