StarWind NVMe-oF Initiator – Industry's first NVMe-oF initiator for Windows

MIDDLETON, Mass. - Rezul -- StarWind, a leading provider of hyperconverged IT environments for SMB and ROBO, developed the first free solution that brings NVMe over Fabrics to Windows. Being a hardware vendor, we know how low perception of NVMe is. NVMe is not mature enough to be adopted for mass use. Even though the protocol for presenting PCIe SSDs over the network (NMVe over Fabrics), NVMe Management Interface, and Targets have been developed, there are no native means for working with these drives in Windows.

NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) is a perfect alternative to the legacy protocols (iSCSI, iSER, SMB3, and NFS) used to access storage. These protocols are good for SAS drives, but they are proven to be inefficient for PCIe flash. Once a PCIe SSDs are presented over the network via any of those protocols, their latency dramatically increases.

StarWind NVMe-oF Initiator is the first free all-software solution bringing the full NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) support to Windows. Before, users required special network interface cards (NICs) to let Hyper-V VMs talk effectively to flash. Being installed as a driver, the Initiator enables Hyper-V VMs to get all performance that PCIe flash can potentially provide. The Initiator works with popular targets like Intel SPDK NVMe-oF Target and Linux NVMe-oF Target, so end users are not locked in to any proprietary software or hardware. The solution has the following three benefits:

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• All-software: Being just a driver, StarWind NVMe-oF Initiator can be deployed on any software. It requires no hardware. Just make sure that your NICs support RDMA.
• Free: The solution is free to use in any environment, be it a lab or production cluster.
• Works on Windows: Designed for Windows and extensively tested on it, the Initiator brings NVMe-oF support to this OS.

About StarWind

StarWind a virtualization pioneer focused on delivering Software-Defined Storage and HyperConverged Infrastructure solutions designed to build high-performing, flexible, and resilient IT infrastructures for SMB and ROBO. Founded in 2009, StarWind has spread remarkably over the globe and helped to build virtualization infrastructures for over 140,000 free users and more than 4,000 paying customers around the world.