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Introduction to Zoned Storage

This section provides information about zoned storage principles and underlying storage device technologies as well as an overview of emulated devices in Linux.

  • Zoned Storage Devices: Principle of operation of zoned storage devices.

  • Shingled Magnetic Recording Hard Disks: Learn about Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) technology and its use in zoned hard-disks.

  • NVMe Zoned Namespaces Devices: Learn about NVMe™ Zoned Namespace (ZNS) and its use in solid state drives (SSDs).

  • Emulated Zoned Storage Devices: Emulated zoned block devices make it possible to do application development and tests even if you do not have access to zoned storage hardware. Linux offers several ways available to create an emulated zoned block device. The getting started guide provides simple usage examples of the zloop and null_blk drivers to quickly set up zoned block devices on a compatible Linux system.