NVMe/TCP Glossary

A reference for the key protocols, architectures, performance metrics, and Kubernetes concepts that surround NVMe/TCP storage networking. Each term links to a full technical page with definitions, comparisons, and context.

Protocol Architecture Performance Kubernetes
Architecture Block Storage Raw storage exposed as block devices without a filesystem Kubernetes CSI Driver Container Storage Interface — Kubernetes storage plugin standard Protocol Fibre Channel High-speed network protocol for storage area networks Performance IOPS I/O Operations Per Second — primary storage performance metric Protocol iSCSI Legacy block storage protocol using SCSI commands over TCP/IP Performance Latency Time delay from I/O request to completion Protocol NFS Network File System — POSIX file-sharing protocol Architecture NVMe Namespace Logical partition of NVMe storage capacity Protocol NVMe over Fabrics Framework for accessing NVMe storage over network fabrics Architecture NVMe Subsystem Collection of NVMe controllers sharing a namespace Protocol NVMe/TCP Protocol for accessing NVMe storage over standard TCP/IP networks Architecture NVMe/TCP Initiator The client in an NVMe/TCP connection that issues I/O commands Architecture NVMe/TCP Target The storage server in an NVMe/TCP connection Kubernetes Persistent Volume Kubernetes abstraction for durable pod storage Performance Queue Depth Number of I/O commands that can be outstanding simultaneously Protocol RDMA Remote Direct Memory Access — network I/O bypassing the host CPU Protocol RoCE RDMA over Converged Ethernet — RDMA transport for standard Ethernet Architecture Storage Area Network (SAN) Dedicated high-speed network for storage Protocol TCP/IP The foundational transport protocol suite of the internet Performance Throughput Volume of data transferred per unit time