Software-assisted fine-grained data protection for non-volatile memory storage devices

An apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of interconnected computing nodes, each of the computing nodes comprising at least one processor and a non-transitory memory;
• a drive array comprising a plurality of non-volatile data storage drives on which extents of data are stored, each data storage drive connected to at least one of the computing nodes;
• and
• software implemented by one of the computing nodes, comprising:
• instructions that select a first IO (input-output) command;
• instructions that determine that the first IO command is associated with only a single data segment in the memory;
• instructions that determine that the first IO command does not require replacement of an application tag;
• and
• instructions that determine that the first IO command does not require replacement of a reference tag;
• wherein one of the drive arrays performs CRC (cyclic redundancy check) verification of data associated with the first IO command, performs application tag verification of data associated with the first IO command, and performs reference tag verification of data associated with the first IO command.