Configure RHEL 9.1 for NVMe-oF with ONTAP storage

10/08/2025 Contributors

Red Hat Enterpirse Linux (RHEL) hosts support the NVMe over Fibre Channel (NVMe/FC) and NVMe over TCP (NVMe/TCP) protocols with Asymmetric Namespace Access (ANA). ANA provides multipathing functionality equivalent to asymmetric logical unit access (ALUA) in iSCSI and FCP environments.

Learn how to configure NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) hosts for RHEL 9.1. For more support and feature information, see NVME-oF Overview.

NVMe-oF with RHEL 9.1 has the following known limitations:

SAN booting using the NVMe-oF protocol is not currently supported.

Step 1: Optionally, enable SAN booting

You can configure your host to use SAN booting to simplify deployment and improve scalability. Use the Interoperability Matrix Tool to verify that your Linux OS, host bus adapter (HBA), HBA firmware, HBA boot BIOS, and ONTAP version support SAN booting.

Steps

Create a NVMe namespace and map it to the host.
Enable SAN booting in the server BIOS for the ports to which the SAN boot namespace is mapped.

For information on how to enable the HBA BIOS, see your vendor-specific documentation.
Reboot the host and verify that the OS is up and running.

Step 2: Verify the software version and NVMe configuration

Check that your system meets software requirements and verify NVMe package installations and host configuration.

Steps

Install RHEL 9.1 on the server. After the installation is complete, verify that you are running the required RHEL 9.1 kernel:
```
uname -r
```
Example RHEL kernel version:
```
5.14.0-162.6.1.el9_1.x86_64
```
Install the nvme-cli package:
```
rpm -qa|grep nvme-cli
```
The following example shows an nvme-cli package version:
```
nvme-cli-2.0-4.el9.x86_64
```
Install the libnvme package:
```
rpm -qa|grep libnvme
```
The following example shows an libnvme package version:
```
libnvme-1.0-3.el9.x86_64
```
On the RHEL 9.1 host, check the hostnqn string at /etc/nvme/hostnqn:
```
cat /etc/nvme/hostnqn
```
The following example shows a hostnqn version:
```
nqn.2014-08.org.nvmexpress:uuid:325e7554-1f9b-11ec-8489-3a68dd61a4df
```

Verify that the hostnqn string matches the hostnqn string for the corresponding subsystem on the ONTAP storage system:

::> vserver nvme subsystem host show -vserver vs_nvme207

Show example

Vserver     Subsystem          Host NQN
----------- --------------- ----------------------------------------------------------
vs_nvme207   rhel_207_LPe32002    nqn.2014-08.org.nvmexpress:uuid:325e7554-1f9b-11ec-8489-3a68dd61a4df

If the hostnqn strings do not match, use the vserver modify command to update the hostnqn string on your corresponding ONTAP storage system subsystem to match the hostnqn string from /etc/nvme/hostnqn on the host.

Step 3: Configure NVMe/FC and NVMe/TCP

Configure NVMe/FC with Broadcom/Emulex or Marvell/QLogic adapters, or configure NVMe/TCP using manual discovery and connect operations.

FC - Broadcom/Emulex

Configure NVMe/FC for a Broadcom/Emulex adapter.

Steps

Verify that you are using the supported adapter model:

Display the model names:

cat /sys/class/scsi_host/host*/modelname

You should see the following output:

LPe32002-M2
LPe32002-M2

Display the model descriptions:

cat /sys/class/scsi_host/host*/modeldesc

You should see output similar to the following example:

Emulex LightPulse LPe32002-M2 2-Port 32Gb Fibre Channel Adapter
Emulex LightPulse LPe32002-M2 2-Port 32Gb Fibre Channel Adapter

Verify that you are using the recommended Broadcom lpfc firmware and inbox driver:
1. Display the firmware version:
  cat /sys/class/scsi_host/host*/fwrev
  The command returns the firmware versions:
  14.0.505.11, sli-4:2:c 14.0.505.11, sli-4:2:c
2. Display the inbox driver version:
  cat /sys/module/lpfc/version
  The following example shows a driver version:
  0:14.2.0.5
  For the current list of supported adapter driver and firmware versions, see the Interoperability Matrix Tool.

Verify that lpfc_enable_fc4_type is set to 3:

cat /sys/module/lpfc/parameters/lpfc_enable_fc4_type

Verify that you can view your initiator ports:
```
cat /sys/class/fc_host/host*/port_name
```
You should see output similar to:
```
0x100000109b1b95ef
0x100000109b1b95f0
```
Verify that your initiator ports are online:
```
cat /sys/class/fc_host/host*/port_state
```
You should see the following output:
```
Online
Online
```

Verify that the NVMe/FC initiator ports are enabled and that the target ports are visible:

cat /sys/class/scsi_host/host*/nvme_info

Show example

NVME Initiator Enabled
XRI Dist lpfc0 Total 6144 IO 5894 ELS 250
NVME LPORT lpfc0 WWPN x100000109b1b95ef WWNN x200000109b1b95ef DID x061700 ONLINE
NVME RPORT       WWPN x2035d039ea1308e5 WWNN x2082d039ea1308e5 DID x062f05 TARGET DISCSRVC ONLINE
NVME RPORT       WWPN x2083d039ea1308e5 WWNN x2082d039ea1308e5 DID x062407 TARGET DISCSRVC ONLINE

NVME Statistics
LS: Xmt 000000000e Cmpl 000000000e Abort 00000000
LS XMIT: Err 00000000  CMPL: xb 00000000 Err 00000000
Total FCP Cmpl 000000000001df6c Issue 000000000001df6e OutIO 0000000000000002
  abort 00000000 noxri 00000000 nondlp 00000000 qdepth 00000000 wqerr 00000000 err 00000000
FCP CMPL: xb 00000000 Err 00000004

NVME Initiator Enabled
XRI Dist lpfc1 Total 6144 IO 5894 ELS 250
NVME LPORT lpfc1 WWPN x100000109b1b95f0 WWNN x200000109b1b95f0 DID x061400 ONLINE
NVME RPORT       WWPN x2036d039ea1308e5 WWNN x2082d039ea1308e5 DID x061605 TARGET DISCSRVC ONLINE
NVME RPORT       WWPN x2037d039ea1308e5 WWNN x2082d039ea1308e5 DID x062007 TARGET DISCSRVC ONLINE

NVME Statistics
LS: Xmt 000000000e Cmpl 000000000e Abort 00000000
LS XMIT: Err 00000000  CMPL: xb 00000000 Err 00000000
Total FCP Cmpl 000000000001dd28 Issue 000000000001dd29 OutIO 0000000000000001
  abort 00000000 noxri 00000000 nondlp 00000000 qdepth 00000000 wqerr 00000000 err 00000000
FCP CMPL: xb 00000000 Err 00000004

FC - Marvell/QLogic

Configure NVMe/FC for a Marvell/QLogic adapter.

Steps

Verify that you are using the supported adapter driver and firmware versions:
```
cat /sys/class/fc_host/host*/symbolic_name
```
The following example shows driver and firmware versions:
```
QLE2772 FW:v9.08.02 DVR:v10.02.07.400-k-debug
QLE2772 FW:v9.08.02 DVR:v10.02.07.400-k-debug
```
Verify that ql2xnvmeenable is set. This enables the Marvell adapter to function as an NVMe/FC initiator:
```
cat /sys/module/qla2xxx/parameters/ql2xnvmeenable
```
The expected output is 1.

TCP

The NVMe/TCP protocol doesn't support the auto-connect operation. Instead, you can discover the NVMe/TCP subsystems and namespaces by performing the NVMe/TCP connect or connect-all operations manually.

Steps

Check that the initiator port can get the discovery log page data across the supported NVMe/TCP LIFs:

nvme discover -t tcp -w host-traddr -a traddr

Show example

nvme discover -t tcp -w 192.168.1.8 -a 192.168.1.51

Discovery Log Number of Records 10, Generation counter 119
=====Discovery Log Entry 0======
trtype: tcp
adrfam: ipv4
subtype: nvme subsystem
treq: not specified
trsvcid: 4420
traddr: 192.168.2.56
=====Discovery Log Entry 1======
trtype: tcp
adrfam: ipv4
subtype: nvme subsystem
treq: not specified
trsvcid: 4420
traddr: 192.168.1.51
sectype: none
=====Discovery Log Entry 2======
trtype: tcp
adrfam: ipv4
subtype: nvme subsystem
treq: not specified
trsvcid: 4420
traddr: 192.168.2.56

Verify that the other NVMe/TCP initiator-target LIF combinations can successfully retrieve the discovery log page data:

nvme discover -t tcp -w host-traddr -a traddr

Show example

nvme discover -t tcp -w 192.168.1.8 -a 192.168.1.51
nvme discover -t tcp -w 192.168.1.8 -a 192.168.1.52
nvme discover -t tcp -w 192.168.2.9 -a 192.168.2.56
nvme discover -t tcp -w 192.168.2.9 -a 192.168.2.57

Run the nvme connect-all command across all the supported NVMe/TCP initiator-target LIFs across the nodes:

nvme connect-all -t tcp -w host-traddr -a traddr

Show example

nvme connect-all -t tcp -w 192.168.1.8 -a 192.168.1.51 -l 1800
nvme connect-all -t tcp -w 192.168.1.8 -a 192.168.1.52 -l 1800
nvme connect-all -t tcp -w 192.168.2.9 -a 192.168.2.56 -l 1800
nvme connect-all -t tcp -w 192.168.2.9 -a 192.168.2.57 -l 1800

Step 4: Optionally, enable 1MB I/O for NVMe/FC

ONTAP reports a Max Data Transfer Size (MDTS) of 8 in the Identify Controller data. This means the maximum I/O request size can be up to 1MB. To issue I/O requests of size 1MB for a Broadcom NVMe/FC host, you should increase the lpfc value of the lpfc_sg_seg_cnt parameter to 256 from the default value of 64.

These steps don't apply to Qlogic NVMe/FC hosts.

Steps

Set the lpfc_sg_seg_cnt parameter to 256:
```
cat /etc/modprobe.d/lpfc.conf
```
You should see an output similar to the following example:
```
options lpfc lpfc_sg_seg_cnt=256
```
Run the dracut -f command, and reboot the host.

Verify that the value for lpfc_sg_seg_cnt is 256:

cat /sys/module/lpfc/parameters/lpfc_sg_seg_cnt

Step 5: Verify the multipathing configuration

Verify that the in-kernel NVMe multipath status, ANA status, and ONTAP namespaces are correct for the NVMe-oF configuration.

Steps

Verify that the in-kernel NVMe multipath is enabled:
```
cat /sys/module/nvme_core/parameters/multipath
```
You should see the following output:
```
Y
```
Verify that the appropriate NVMe-oF settings (such as, model set to NetApp ONTAP Controller and load balancing iopolicy set to round-robin) for the respective ONTAP namespaces correctly reflect on the host:
1. Display the subsystems:
  cat /sys/class/nvme-subsystem/nvme-subsys*/model
  You should see the following output:
  NetApp ONTAP Controller NetApp ONTAP Controller
2. Display the policy:
  cat /sys/class/nvme-subsystem/nvme-subsys*/iopolicy
  You should see the following output:
  round-robin round-robin

Verify that the namespaces are created and correctly discovered on the host:

nvme list

Show example

Node         SN                   Model
---------------------------------------------------------
/dev/nvme4n1 81Ix2BVuekWcAAAAAAAB	NetApp ONTAP Controller


Namespace Usage    Format             FW             Rev
-----------------------------------------------------------
1                 21.47 GB / 21.47 GB	4 KiB + 0 B   FFFFFFFF

Verify that the controller state of each path is live and has the correct ANA status:

NVMe/FC

nvme list-subsys /dev/nvme0n1

Show example

nvme-subsys10 - NQN=nqn.1992-08.com.netapp:sn.82e7f9edc72311ec8187d039ea14107d:subsystem.rhel_131_QLe2742
\
 +- nvme2 fc traddr=nn-0x2038d039ea1308e5:pn-0x2039d039ea1308e5,host_traddr=nn-0x20000024ff171d30:pn-0x21000024ff171d30 live non-optimized
 +- nvme3 fc traddr=nn-0x2038d039ea1308e5:pn-0x203cd039ea1308e5,host_traddr=nn-0x20000024ff171d31:pn-0x21000024ff171d31 live optimized
 +- nvme4 fc traddr=nn-0x2038d039ea1308e5:pn-0x203bd039ea1308e5,host_traddr=nn-0x20000024ff171d30:pn-0x21000024ff171d30 live optimized
 +- nvme5 fc traddr=nn-0x2038d039ea1308e5:pn-0x203ad039ea1308e5,host_traddr=nn-0x20000024ff171d31:pn-0x21000024ff171d31 live non-optimized

NVMe/TCP

nvme list-subsys /dev/nvme0n1

Show example

nvme-subsys1 - NQN=nqn.1992-08.com.netapp:sn.bf0691a7c74411ec8187d039ea14107d:subsystem.rhel_tcp_133
\
 +- nvme1 tcp traddr=192.168.166.21,trsvcid=4420,host_traddr=192.168.166.5 live non-optimized
 +- nvme2 tcp traddr=192.168.166.20,trsvcid=4420,host_traddr=192.168.166.5 live optimized
 +- nvme3 tcp traddr=192.168.167.21,trsvcid=4420,host_traddr=192.168.167.5 live non-optimized
 +- nvme4 tcp traddr=192.168.167.20,trsvcid=4420,host_traddr=192.168.167.5 live optimized

Verify that the NetApp plug-in displays the correct values for each ONTAP namespace device:

Column

nvme netapp ontapdevices -o column

Show example

Device       Vserver          Namespace Path
---------    -------          --------------------------------------------------
/dev/nvme0n1 vs_tcp79     /vol/vol1/ns1 

NSID  UUID                                   Size
----  ------------------------------         ------
1     79c2c569-b7fa-42d5-b870-d9d6d7e5fa84  21.47GB

JSON

nvme netapp ontapdevices -o json

Show example

{

  "ONTAPdevices" : [
  {

      "Device" : "/dev/nvme0n1",
      "Vserver" : "vs_tcp79",
      "Namespace_Path" : "/vol/vol1/ns1",
      "NSID" : 1,
      "UUID" : "79c2c569-b7fa-42d5-b870-d9d6d7e5fa84",
      "Size" : "21.47GB",
      "LBA_Data_Size" : 4096,
      "Namespace_Size" : 5242880
    },

]

}

Step 6: Review the known issues

These are the known issues:

NetApp Bug ID Title Description

NetApp Bug ID	Title	Description
1503468	`nvme list-subsys` command returns repeated nvme controller list for a given subsystem	The `nvme list-subsys` command returns a list of NVMe controllers for a given subsystem. In RHEL 9.1, this command shows controllers with their ANA state for all namespaces in the subsystem. Because ANA state is a per-namespace attribute, the command should display unique controller entries with the path state for each namespace.

1503468

nvme list-subsys command returns repeated nvme controller list for a given subsystem

The nvme list-subsys command returns a list of NVMe controllers for a given subsystem. In RHEL 9.1, this command shows controllers with their ANA state for all namespaces in the subsystem. Because ANA state is a per-namespace attribute, the command should display unique controller entries with the path state for each namespace.

Configure RHEL 9.1 for NVMe-oF with ONTAP storage

Creating your file...

Step 1: Optionally, enable SAN booting

Step 2: Verify the software version and NVMe configuration

Step 3: Configure NVMe/FC and NVMe/TCP

Step 4: Optionally, enable 1MB I/O for NVMe/FC

Step 5: Verify the multipathing configuration

Step 6: Review the known issues