With Linux 4.12, Clouds/VMs Backed By NVMe Storage Should Be Much Faster

With the Linux 4.12 kernel when running in emulated environments like VMs/clouds atop NVMe (NVM Express) solid-state storage you should be able to obtain much greater performance.

Last year we wrote about a performance improvement for virtual NVMe drives and that work has culminated in the NVMe v1.3 specification with the "Doorbell Buffer Config command" and is supported with the Linux 4.12 kernel code. NVM Express 1.3 was ratified last month.

More details on the functionality and performance impact can be found via this Collabora blog post.