What is the difference between the terms “hot-swap”, “hot-plug”, and “hot-replaceable”? （NVMe）
Written by Support Team
Updated at January 17th, 2023
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What is the difference between the terms “hot-swap”, “hot-plug”, and “hot-replaceable”?
HighPoint uses “hot-swap”, “hot-plug” and “hot-replaceable” to describe three different functions associated with removable devices.
Hot-Swap
“Hot-swap” is not specific to a particular type of storage or connectivity technology, and refers to a device’s ability to be physically removed on the fly (such as many USB devices), or via a software utility, while the operating system is running. The operating system will recognize that a device has been added or removed; the device and operating system will continue to function, normally.
Currently, NVMe devices do not support true hot-swap.
Hot-Plug
The HighPoint SSD7580B PCIe Gen4 U.2 NVMe RAID controller features true “hot-plug” support. Hot-plug is similar to hot-swap, but requires user input via a management interface in order to notify the operating system of the hardware change. The controller allows administrators to add or remove U.2 drives as needed, via our WebGUI and CLI management interfaces, without having to power down the host platform or Restart the operating system.
Hot-Replaceable
The term “hot replaceable” is most commonly associated with NVMe RAID configurations, specifically redundant RAID levels such as RAID 1 and 1/0. A “hot-replaceable” NVMe RAID array requires an environment where a spare SSD is already online or a free (unoccupied) port/channel is available to accept a new SSD.
In this context, hot-replaceable means a target NVMe SSD can be “virtually” replaced with another SSD while the system remains active (to rebuild a broken array, for example) via a software interface (such as the HighPoint WebGUI). However, administrators will still need to power down the system in order to physically remove the SSD and free the corresponding port/channel for use with another SSD.