By Dan Robinson
Publication Date: 2026-08-04 15:02:00
STORAGE
Exposing virtualization built into the SSD will make VM migration simpler, consortium says
The NVM Express (NVMe) specifications have been updated, gaining enhancements such as support for post-quantum cryptography, and SSD virtualization and live migration to better support virtualized environments.
Announced by the NVM Express consortium, all 11 of the suite of NVMe specs have been updated with new features and engineering change notices. These represent the next step in the evolution of the standard, it says, which was created as a protocol to support storage devices connected to a system’s PCIe bus.
Perhaps the most significant new capability is PCIe Exported NVM Subsystem Migration. This extends existing NVMe virtualization to locally-attached PCIe SSDs. It does this by abstracting the physical drives into host-defined virtualized NVM subsystems, to allow for virtual machine (VM) mobility without storage reconfiguration.
When a VM moves from one server to another, its storage also needs to move with it in a way that’s non-disruptive to any applications running in that VM.
“With NVM Subsystem Migration, NVMe SSDs can present exported NVM subsystems that hide the complexity of the underlying hardware,” says Mike Allison, a senior director at SSD maker Samsung and NVM Express board member.
“Instead of interacting with physical controllers and namespaces, the host only sees…
