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Smartmontools NVMe support
Table of Contents
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
- Intel NVMe documentation with Intel-specific log pages (CAh, C5h, DDh, C1h/C2h).
- OCZ Z-Drive specification, with vendor-specific smart log page (E0h)
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) - 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
smartddaemon tracks health (-H), error count (-l error) and temperature (-W DIFF,INFO,CRIT)
Currently NVMe support is implemented on Linux, Windows and FreeBSD. 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, since kernel version 3.3 | ✓ | ✓ | nvme-cli, nvme-user | |
| FreeBSD 9.2 or later | ✓ | ✓ | nvmecontrol | |
| NetBSD | - | - | Plans to add NVMe support are in the NetBSD Storage Roadmap | |
| OpenBSD | - | - | See this thread | |
| OSX 10.10.3 native NVMe support | ✓ | - | Only Apple-branded NVMe devices are supported, monitoring API is implemented (NVMeSMARTClient) but not documented | |
| OSX with MacVidCards NVMe driver | ✓ | - | nvme-cli tool distributed with the driver | IOCTL format is not documented, driver is closed source |
| Oracle Solaris 11.2+ | ✓ | - | nvmeadm | Interface is not documented |
| IllumOS NVMe driver | ✓ | - | not yet implemented | no management interface/tool yet implemented |
| Windows with OpenFabrics compatible NVMe driver | ✓ | ✓ | Various vendor specific tools | Devices are accessed via NVME_PASS_THROUGH I/O-control. Successfully tested with NVMe drivers from Intel, OCZ and Samsung. Does not work with Intel RST driver or Microsoft driver. |
| 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 | ✓ | - | ?? | IOCTL_STORAGE_PROTOCOL_COMMAND is not yet supported by smartmontools. |
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.
