NQN (NVMe Qualified Name) — NVMe Storage Glossary

An NQN (NVMe Qualified Name) is a unique string identifier used in NVMe-oF to identify NVMe subsystems (targets) and hosts (initiators). NQNs function like iSCSI IQNs — they allow initiators to specify which subsystem to connect to, and targets to enforce access control per host.

NVMe Storage

NQN Format

NQNs follow one of two formats defined in the NVMe specification:

Date-qualified format (recommended)

nqn.<YYYY-MM>.<reverse-domain>:<unique-id>

Example: nqn.2024-01.com.example:storage-cluster-1

UUID format

nqn.2014-08.org.nvmexpress:uuid:<UUID>

Example: nqn.2014-08.org.nvmexpress:uuid:550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000

Host NQN

Each initiator host also has an NQN, auto-generated on Linux at /etc/nvme/hostnqn. NVMe-oF targets use the host NQN to enforce access control — only hosts whose NQN is on the allowed list can connect to a given subsystem.

# View this host's NQN

cat /etc/nvme/hostnqn

# Generate a new host NQN if missing

nvme gen-hostnqn