Smartmontools NVMe support

About NVMe

VM Express, NVMe, or Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Specification (NVMHCI), is a logical device interface specification for accessing non-volatile storage media attached via PCI Express (PCIe) bus. Some links related to the standard and vendor-specific implementations provided below:

• ​Official specifications
• ​An NVM Express Tutorial, Kevin Marks (Dell) in ​Flash Memory Summit 2013.
• ​Intel DC PC3608 specification with Intel-specific log pages (CAh, C5h, DDh, C1h/C2h).

Smartmontools NVMe support

Smartmontools supports NVMe starting from version 6.5. Please note, that currently NVMe support is considered as experimental. Currently implemented features:

• Basic information about controller name, firmware, capacity (smartctl -i)
• Controller and namespace capabilities (smartctl -c)
• SMART overall-health self-assessment test result and warnings (smartctl -H)
• NVMe SMART attributes (smartctl -A)
• NVMe error log (smartctl -l error[,NUM])
• Ability to fetch any nvme log (smartctl -l nvmelog,N,SIZE)
• The smartd daemon tracks health (-H), error count (-l error) and temperature (-W DIFF,INFO,CRIT)

Currently NVMe support is implemented on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Windows and OSX. Details about supported version/driver combinations are provided in the next section.

NVMe support in the different OS

OS and driver	Supported by OS	Supported by Smartmontools	Native management tools	Notes
Linux 3.3 or later	✓	✓	​nvme-cli, ​nvme-user
FreeBSD 9.2 or later	✓	✓	​nvmecontrol
NetBSD 8.0 or later	✓	✓	​nvmectl	Smartmontools supports this since 6.6 (r4343).
OpenBSD 6.0 or later	✓	-	??	Does the ​OpenBSD NVMe driver provide NVMe pass-through functionality?
OSX 10.10.3+ native NVMe support	✓	✓		Before release 10.13 only Apple-branded NVMe devices were supported, monitoring API is implemented (NVMeSMARTClient) but not documented. Limited NVMe support added in the ​DriveDx app (commercial, closed source) and in the smartmontools since 6.6 (r4438).
OSX with ​MacVidCards NVMe driver	✓	-	nvme-cli tool distributed with the driver	IOCTL format is not documented, driver is closed source and seems to be abandoned
Oracle Solaris 11.2+	✓	-	​nvmeadm	Interface is not documented
IllumOS ​NVMe driver	✓	-	​nvmeadm	​NVME_IOC ioctl
Windows with driver supporting ​NVME_PASS_THROUGH	✓	✓	Various vendor specific tools	Successfully tested with NVMe drivers from Intel, OCZ/Toshiba and Samsung. Does not work with Intel RST drivers or Microsoft NVMe drivers.
Windows with ​Intel RST driver	✓	-		See ticket #1223.
Windows 7 to 2012.R2 with ​Microsoft NVMe driver	(✓)	-	??	Older Microsoft NVMe drivers ​do not provide a NVMe pass-through I/O-control.
Windows 10 with Microsoft NVMe driver (stornvme.sys)	✓	✓	??	Access via ​enhanced version of IOCTL_STORAGE_QUERY_PROPERTY is supported since smartmontools 6.6 (r4348).

NVMe pass-through support of USB to NVMe bridges

USB bridge	USB-Id	Has NVMe pass-through	Supported by Smartmontools	Notes
ASMedia ASM2362	0x174c:0x2362	✓	-	See ticket #1221.
JMicron JMS583	0x152d:0x0583	✓	✓	-d sntjmicron (since 7.0)
Realtek RTL9210	0x0bda:0x9210	✓	✓	-d sntrealtek (since r5051)

Sample smartctl output

Sample smartctl -x output:

smartctl 6.5 2016-04-27 r4312 [x86_64-w64-mingw32-win10] (daily-20160427)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Number:                       Samsung SSD 950 PRO 256GB
Serial Number:                      ...
Firmware Version:                   1B0QBXX7
PCI Vendor/Subsystem ID:            0x144d
IEEE OUI Identifier:                0x002538
Controller ID:                      1
Number of Namespaces:               1
Namespace 1 Size/Capacity:          256,060,514,304 [256 GB]
Namespace 1 Utilization:            117,410,267,136 [117 GB]
Namespace 1 Formatted LBA Size:     512
Local Time is:                      Thu Apr 28 19:32:07 2016 CEST
Firmware Updates (0x06):            3 Slots
Optional Admin Commands (0x0007):   Security Format Frmw_DL
Optional NVM Commands (0x001f):     Comp Wr_Unc DS_Mngmt Wr_Zero Sav/Sel_Feat
Maximum Data Transfer Size:         32 Pages

Supported Power States
St Op     Max   Active     Idle   RL RT WL WT  Ent_Lat  Ex_Lat
 0 +     6.50W       -        -    0  0  0  0        5       5
 1 +     5.80W       -        -    1  1  1  1       30      30
 2 +     3.60W       -        -    2  2  2  2      100     100
 3 -   0.0700W       -        -    3  3  3  3      500    5000
 4 -   0.0050W       -        -    4  4  4  4     2000   22000

Supported LBA Sizes (NSID 0x1)
Id Fmt  Data  Metadt  Rel_Perf
 0 +     512       0         0

=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02, NSID 0xffffffff)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        40 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          10%
Percentage Used:                    0%
Data Units Read:                    1,769,281 [905 GB]
Data Units Written:                 1,384,224 [708 GB]
Host Read Commands:                 24,646,213
Host Write Commands:                19,105,374
Controller Busy Time:               38
Power Cycles:                       32
Power On Hours:                     129
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   6
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      44

Error Information (NVMe Log 0x01, max 64 entries)
Num   ErrCount  SQId   CmdId  Status  PELoc          LBA  NSID    VS
  0         44     0  0x002a  0x4016  0x000            0   255     -
  1         43     0  0x0029  0x4016  0x000            0   255     -
  2         42     0  0x0049  0x4016  0x000            0   255     -
  3         41     0  0x0048  0x4016  0x000            0   255     -
  4         40     0  0x001f  0x4004  0x000            0     0     -
  5         39     0  0x001e  0x4004  0x000            0     0     -
  6         38     0  0x001f  0x4004  0x000            0     0     -
  7         37     0  0x001e  0x4004  0x000            0     0     -
  8         36     0  0x001f  0x4004  0x000            0     0     -
  9         35     0  0x001e  0x4004  0x000            0     0     -
 10         34     0  0x001d  0x4004  0x000            0     0     -
 11         33     0  0x001c  0x4004  0x000            0     0     -
 12         32     0  0x001d  0x4004  0x000            0     0     -
 13         31     0  0x001c  0x4004  0x000            0     0     -
 14         30     0  0x001d  0x4004  0x000            0     0     -
 15         29     0  0x001c  0x4004  0x000            0     0     -
... (28 entries not shown)

Development notes

Development and debugging could be performed using ​QEMU fork which can emulates NVMe device with most of the features supported, including SMART log pages, namespaces, etc. Tested with Linux and FreeBSD, full list of the options could be found in the ​source code. The NVMe emulation in the ​upstream version of QEMU (2.7.0) is still more limited (single namespace, no log pages).

​VirtualBox 5.1.0 or later also provides basic NVMe emulation.

See list of the NVMe related tickets if you want to improve smartmontools NVMe support.