Skip to main content
ONTAP SAN Host Utilities

Learn about configuring ONTAP SAN hosts with NVMe-OF

Contributors netapp-sarajane
PDFs

You can configure supported SAN hosts to use the NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) protocol with ONTAP as the storage target. NVMe-oF includes NVMe over Fibre Channel (NVMe/FC) and NVMe over TCP (NVMe/TCP). Depending on your host operating system and ONTAP version, you configure and validate the NVMe/FC or NVMe/TCP protocol, or both on the host.

ONTAP support and features

The table shows ONTAP features supported by ONTAP versions and SAN host operating systems:

ONTAP feature Supported SAN hosts ONTAP version

Secure in-band authentication for NVMe/TCP

  • RHEL 10.0

  • RHEL 9.6, 9.5

  • Rocky Linux 10.0

  • Rocky Linux 9.6, 9.5

Support begins with 9.12.1

NVMe/TCP in addition to NVMe/FC

Provides ONTAP details for both NVMe/FC and NVMe/TCP namespaces using the native nvme-cli package.

  • RHEL 10.0

  • RHEL 9.6, 9.5, 9.4, 9.3, 9.2, 9.1

  • RHEL 8.10, 8.9, 8.8, 8.7, 8.6, 8.5, 8.4, 8.8, 8.2

  • Rocky Linux 10.0

  • Rocky Linux 9.6, 9.5, 9.4, 9.3, 9.2, 9.1

  • Rocky Linux 8.10, 8.9, 8.8, 8.7, 8.6, 8.5, 8.4, 8.8, 8.2

Support begins with 9.10.1

NVMe/TCP is a fully supported enterprise feature

  • RHEL 10.0

  • RHEL 9.6, 9.5, 9.4, 9.3, 9.2, 9.1, 9.0

  • Rocky Linux 10.0

  • Rocky Linux 9.6, 9.5, 9.4, 9.3, 9.2, 9.1, 9.0

Support begins with 9.10.1

NVMe and SCSI traffic supported on the same host

Use dm-multipath for SCSI LUNs and NVMe multipath for NVMe-oF namespaces.

  • RHEL 10.0

  • RHEL 9.6, 9.5, 9.4, 9.3, 9.2, 9.1, 9.0

  • RHEL 8.10, 8.9, 8.8, 8.7, 8.6, 8.5, 8.4, 8.3, 8.2

  • Rocky Linux 10.0

  • Rocky Linux 9.6, 9.5, 9.4, 9.3, 9.2, 9.1, 9.0

  • Rocky Linux 8.10, 8.9, 8.8, 8.7, 8.6, 8.5, 8.4, 8.3, 8.2

Support begins with 9.4

ONTAP supports the following SAN Host features regardless of the ONTAP version running on your system setup:

ONTAP feature Supported SAN hosts

Native NVMe multipathing is always enabled

ONTAP does not support Device Mapper (DM) multipath for NVMe-oF.

  • RHEL 10.0

  • Rocky Linux 10.0

SAN booting using NVMe/FC protocol

  • RHEL 10.0

  • RHEL 9.6, 9.5, 9.4

  • Rocky Linux 10.0

  • Rocky Linux 9.6, 9.5, 9.4

nvme-cli package includes auto-connect scripts

You do not need third-party scripts.

  • RHEL 10.0

  • RHEL 9.6, 9.5, 9.4, 9.3, 9.2, 9.1, 9.0

  • RHEL 8.10, 8.9, 8.8, 8.7, 8.6, 8.5, 8.4, 8.3, 8.2

  • Rocky Linux 10.0

  • Rocky Linux 9.6, 9.5, 9.4, 9.3, 9.2, 9.1, 9.0

  • Rocky Linux 8.10, 8.9, 8.8, 8.7, 8.6, 8.5, 8.4, 8.3, 8.2

Native udev rule in nvme-cli package

Provides round-robin load balancing for NVMe multipath.

  • RHEL 10.0

  • RHEL 9.6, 9.5, 9.4, 9.3, 9.2, 9.1, 9.0

  • RHEL 8.10, 8.9, 8.8, 8.7, 8.6, 8.5, 8.4, 8.3, 8.2

  • Rocky Linux 10.0

  • Rocky Linux 9.6, 9.5, 9.4, 9.3, 9.2, 9.1, 9.0

  • Rocky Linux 8.10, 8.9, 8.8, 8.7, 8.6, 8.5, 8.4, 8.3, 8.2

In-kernel NVMe multipathing for NVMe namespaces

ONTAP enables this feature by default; you do not need to change any settings.

  • RHEL 9.6, 9.5, 9.4, 9.3, 9.2, 9.1, 9.0

  • Rocky Linux 9.6, 9.5, 9.4, 9.3, 9.2, 9.1, 9.0
Note For details on supported configurations, see the Interoperability Matrix Tool.
Related information