White Papers

Introduction
5 NVMe Hot-Plug on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers running VMware vSphere or vSAN | Technical white paper |
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1 Introduction
Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) is an architecture that is optimized for solid-state devices (SSD)
connected directly to a PCIe bus. NVMe devices consist of a PCIe host interface, SSD controller and a non-
volatile memory. Unlike SAS or SATA interfaces, NVMe does not make use of host bus adapters (HBA).
1.1 Audience and Scope
The intended audience for this white paper includes IT Administrators, Channel Partners and users using hot-
pluggable NVMe devices on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers running VMware vSphere or VMware vSAN. This
white paper includes instructions for users to explore the hot-plug capabilities of NVMe devices.
1.2 Terminology
Hot insertion: Connecting an NVMe device when VMware ESXi operating system is booted up.
Surprise removal: Removing a device from the system without notifying the system beforehand.
Orderly removal: Removing an NVMe device after completing the pre-requisites, such as suspending all
processes accessing the device.
Hot swap: Replacement of an NVMe SSD with a new SSD (from the same or different vendor) while the host
is up and running. Hot swap is a surprise removal followed by a hot insertion operation with a different NVMe
device.
1.3 NVMe Command-Line Interface
This white paper showcases several hot-plug operations enabled on NVMe devices via the command-line
interface. VMware provides an NVMe namespace in esxcli. For more information, see vSphere Command-
Line Interface Reference.