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Learn about NFS over RDMA in ONTAP

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NFS over RDMA uses RDMA-capable network adapters, allowing data to be copied directly between storage system memory and host system memory, circumventing CPU interruptions and overhead.

NFS over RDMA configurations are designed for customers with latency sensitive or high-bandwidth workloads such as machine learning and analytics. ONTAP NFS over RDMA can be used for any NFS based workloads. In addition, NVIDIA has extended NFS over RDMA to enable GPU Direct Storage (GDS). GDS further accelerates GPU-enabled workloads by bypassing the CPU and main memory altogether, using RDMA to transfer data between the storage system and GPU memory directly.

Beginning with ONTAP 9.10.1, NFS over RDMA configurations are supported for the NFSv4.0 protocol. Subsequent ONTAP releases introduced support for additional NFS versions.

Requirements

  • Ensure you are running the correct version of ONTAP for the NFS version you want to use.

    NFS version ONTAP support

    NFSv4.0

    ONTAP 9.10.1 and later

    NFSv4.1

    ONTAP 9.14.1 and later

    NFSv3

    ONTAP 9.15.1 and later

    • You can configure NFS over RDMA with System Manager beginning with ONTAP 9.12.1. In ONTAP 9.10.1 and 9.11.1, you need to use the CLI to configure NFS over RDMA.

  • Both nodes in the high availability (HA) pair must be the same version.

  • Storage system controllers must support RDMA:

    Beginning with ONTAP…​ The following controllers support RDMA…​

    9.10.1 and later

    • AFF A400

    • AFF A700

    • AFF A800

    ONTAP 9.14.1 and later

    • AFF C-Series

    • AFF A900

    ONTAP 9.15.1 and later

    • AFF A1K

    • AFF A90

    • AFF A70

    ONTAP 9.16.1 and later

    • AFF A50

    • AFF A30

    • AFF A20

  • Data LIFs must be configured to support RDMA.

  • For information about target RNIC support, refer to the NetApp Hardware Universe.

  • For information on supported client operating systems for NFS over RDMA, refer to the NetApp Interoperability Matrix (IMT). For RoCE v2 supported RNICs, refer to the respective RNIC vendor documentation.

Note Interface groups are not supported with NFS over RDMA.
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