Spec Updates & What Customers Care About

An OCP Global Summit 2025 storage panel updating the OCP Data Center SAS/SATA (1.5) and NVMe SSD (2.7) specifications and surfacing what hyperscaler and OEM customers care about. Speakers from Dell, HPE, Google, Microsoft and Meta cover telemetry, post-quantum security, OCP L.O.C.K., liquid cooling, power efficiency, QLC, and ML-driven self-healing. The session closes with audience Q&A on a future 2.8 spec, CNSA 2.0 timelines, AI/GPU storage-bound workloads, TPM/SSD key security, and larger IO sizes.

Key Takeaways

OCP Data Center SAS/SATA spec 1.5 (Microsoft, Meta, HPE, Dell) ports NVMe 2.5 telemetry, human-readable debug logs, TCG configuration history, and SMART-attribute replacements to SAS/SATA media.
OCP Data Center NVMe SSD spec 2.7 (Microsoft, Meta, HPE, Dell, Google) was heading to the steering committee in November 2025, adding TP 4199 self-reported power, QLC SMART stats, human-readable latency/telemetry logs, E2 support, multi-BMC two-wire (TP 6035), and generalized event injection.
Security is the dominant theme: post-quantum cryptography (CNSA 2.0) is preferred in 2025 with a hard January 1, 2027 mandate, requiring dual-signed firmware, SPDM 1.4 multi-bank, and higher-bandwidth I3C DDR sideband for PQC signatures 50x-500x larger than ECDSA.
Google positions OCP L.O.C.K. with Caliptra as an open, multi-party secure base layer; the L.O.C.K. 1.0 spec was contributed, Caliptra 2.1 released, and TCG Opal MEK MP host interface readied for public dissemination.
Microsoft reports firmware asserts and hard hangs cause ~90% of fleet failures, addressed via OCP resiliency features plus hourly/daily telemetry and an ML pipeline (>80% precision/recall) driving live migration, service healing, and spare pre-allocation.
Meta and HPE stress power efficiency and SATA-replacement NVMe: PCIe Gen6/7/8 cannot keep doubling power, and low-power (6-7W) SATA-replacement NVMe drives are needed to finally retire SATA.
Liquid cooling needs standardized E1.S single-sided cold plates with one liquid/air SKU and mandatory backward compatibility, while most deployments today remain air-cooled.
Looking ahead, a 2.8 spec spreadsheet has begun, with expected QLC, liquid-cooling, and security additions, and emerging SSD classes for tens-of-millions of small IOPS and high-capacity nearline flash.