NVMe namespaces

An NVMe namespace is a quantity of non-volatile memory (NVM) that can be formatted into logical blocks. Namespaces are used when a storage virtual machine is configured with the NVMe protocol.

One or more namespaces are provisioned and connected to an NVMe host. Each namespace can support various block sizes.

The NVMe protocol provides access to namespaces through multiple controllers. Using NVMe drivers, which are supported on most operating systems, solid state drive (SSD) namespaces appear as standard-block devices on which file systems and applications can be deployed without any modification.

A namespace ID (NSID) is an identifier used by a controller to provide access to a namespace. When setting the NSID for a host or host group, you also configure the accessibility to a volume by a host. A logical block can only be mapped to a single host group at a time, and a given host group does not have any duplicate NSIDs.