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EC2 Bare Metal instances boot from an EBS volume that is accessed via a NVMe PCI device (implemented in ASICs built by Annapurna Labs), just like virtualized C5

by _msw_ 9y ago

EC2 Bare Metal instances boot from an EBS volume that is accessed via a NVMe PCI device (implemented in ASICs built by Annapurna Labs), just like virtualized C5 instances.

KaiserPro 9y ago
Why would you boot what is essentially an iSCSI target via NVMe?
- _msw_ 9y ago
  NVMe is just how the storage is surfaced -- the hardware programming interface for the block device. Hardware iSCSI initiators (HBAs) also have a hardware programming interface, but at the end of the day you talk SCSI over that interface. NVMe is a better match for the the storage operations supported by EBS. A bonus is that by surfacing EBS over NVMe there is a common storage interface for both managed storage volumes and local NVMe storage.
  - KaiserPro 9y ago
    so is that a hardware cache, software cache or a storage tier?
    - _msw_ 9y ago
      The NVMe interface to EBS volumes that is implemented in our Nitro system today is closest to a HBA with no additional caching. So, a storage tier.