NVMe Over Fabrics (NVMeF) & Other Block Improvements For Linux 4.8

Jens Axboe submitted his Linux 4.8 block driver and core block changes on Monday for this next kernel development cycle.

Core changes to the block code for Linux 4.8 include another Year 2038 fix, internal code cleaning, an Atari partition fix, CFQ improvements, exposing the DAX type internally and through sysfs, along with other changes.

The core changes are outlined here.

The block driver changes include adding a separate operation type for secure erase, discard fixes, NVMe over Fabrics (NVMeF) support, Bcache fixes, LightNVM updates, and various NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) improvements.

NVMeF support is great to see and is catered towards servers/workstations for accessing externally-connected flash memory at PCI-E speeds. nvme-fabrics is the new NVMe generic Fabrics library being added to Linux 4.8. In user-space the latest nvme-cli utility supports the discovery and connection of fabric devices when using this new kernel code. In recent versions of the Linux kernel there has been much work going into NVMe for benefiting this latest storage tech.

More details on all of the block driver work for Linux 4.8 via this pull request.