System and Method for Sustaining Single NVMe Subsystem by a Federated Storage Array for NVMe-oF Connectivity

A computer program product residing on a computer readable storage medium having a plurality of instructions stored thereon which, when executed across one or more processors, causes at least a portion of the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:

• maintaining a federation of a plurality of appliances as a single subsystem, wherein maintaining the federation as the single subsystem includes:
• maintaining a centralized discovery mechanism across the plurality of appliances, wherein a discovery service of the centralized discovery mechanism returns a list of all ports in the federation;
• allocating controller IDs for a predefined range of controller IDs for a plurality of dynamic controllers per appliance of the plurality of appliances, wherein the controller IDs are allocated as a response to a connect command from a host;
• exposing an empty namespace list for the plurality of dynamic controllers on the plurality of appliances in the federation;
• receiving, by the host, a notification from at least one dynamic controller of the plurality of dynamic controllers on at least one appliance of the plurality of appliances in the federation;
• and
• obtaining, by the host, a list of namespaces hosted on the at least one appliance corresponding to the at least one dynamic controller.

A computing system including one or more processors and one or more memories configured to perform operations comprising:

• maintaining a federation of a plurality of appliances as a single subsystem, wherein maintaining the federation as the single subsystem includes:
• maintaining a centralized discovery mechanism across the plurality of appliances, wherein a discovery service of the centralized discovery mechanism returns a list of all ports in the federation;
• allocating controller IDs for a predefined range of controller IDs for a plurality of dynamic controllers per appliance of the plurality of appliances, wherein the controller IDs are allocated as a response to a connect command from a host;
• exposing an empty namespace list for the plurality of dynamic controllers on the plurality of appliances in the federation;
• receiving, by the host, a notification from at least one dynamic controller of the plurality of dynamic controllers on at least one appliance of the plurality of appliances in the federation;
• and
• obtaining, by the host, a list of namespaces hosted on the at least one appliance corresponding to the at least one dynamic controller.