White Papers

Introduction
5 NVMe Surprise Removal on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers running Linux operating systems | 451
1 Introduction
As NVMe devices are being used more widely, they must provide enterprise functionality such as surprise
removal that you rely on. Surprise removal enhances the serviceability of NVMe devices by eliminating
additional steps required to prepare the devices for orderly removal and ensures availability of servers by
eliminating server downtime.
1.1 Audience and scope
The intended audience for this white paper includes IT administrators and those using hot-pluggable NVMe
devices on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers running supported enterprise Linux operating systems.
1.2 Terminology
Hot insertion: Connecting the NVMe device to the server when the Linux operating system is booted up.
Surprise removal: Removing the NVMe device from the Linux operating system without notifying the
operating system beforehand.
Orderly removal: Removing the NVMe device from the server after completing the prerequisites, such as
suspending all processes accessing the NVMe device and quiescing all I/O operations accessing the NVMe
device.
Hot swap: Replacing an existing NVMe device with a new NVMe device from the same or different vendor
while the host operating system is booted. Hot swap is a surprise removal or orderly removal followed by a
hot insertion operation with a different NVMe device.
1.3 Command-line utilities used for verifying surprise removal of NVMe
devices
The following command-line utilities that are available in the enterprise Linux operating systems are used to
verify hot-plug operations:
• nvme-cli
• lspci
• lsblk