JBOF (just a bunch of flash)

• JBOF (just a bunch of flash)

Facebook is announcing its flexible NVMe JBOF (just a bunch of flash), Lightning.
http://www.storagereview.com/facebook_introduces_a_flexible_nvme_jbof

• "NVMe in a shared chassis look like an internal drive – so it's not shared data. It's not a SAN. You cannot run VMFS (VMware file system) on top of that."

With NVMeF there is a remote direct memory access from a host server to a drive in an NVMeF array.
If you have direct host server access to the array's drives across NVMeF then the array is effectively controller-less, and just a bunch of flash drives (JBOF)
"A SAN? That's associated with Fibre Channel and SCSI. I would call it NVMeF. This is a SAN replacement or next-generation of SAN. It may be a bit confusing to call it a SAN."
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/23/is_an_nvme_over_fabrics_array_a_san/

• Is an NVMe over fabrics array a SAN? "NVMe in a shared chassis look like an internal drive – so it's not shared data. It's not a SAN. You cannot run VMFS (VMware file system) on top of that." With NVMeF there is a remote direct memory access from a host server to a drive in an NVMeF array. If you have direct host server access to the array's drives across NVMeF then the array is effectively controller-less, and just a bunch of flash drives (JBOF)
  "A SAN? That's associated with Fibre Channel and SCSI. I would call it NVMeF. This is a SAN replacement or next-generation of SAN. It may be a bit confusing to call it a SAN."