Intel RST 21.0.0.1033: NVMe Vendor Specific Command (Data-In) issue via IOCTL_SCSI_MINIPORT

[wkao]

Hi Intel Support and Engineers,

I am an SSD tool developer and I am currently facing a issue regarding NVMe Pass-through commands on the Intel RST VMD driver (version 21.0.0.1033).

I use IOCTL_SCSI_MINIPORT with the "IntelNvm" signature to send NVMe admin commands to our SSDs for debugging and vendor-specific operations. While this approach works fine on older RST versions (e.g., 19.0.0.1067), the behavior has changed in RST 21.0.0.1033.

Symptom Description:

1. Standard Commands Work: Standard Admin commands like Identify (0x06) & Get Log Page(0x02) work perfectly fine. The data is correctly copied back to the buffer.

2. Vendor Commands Fail (Get the wrong buffer back): When sending a Vendor Specific Admin Command (Opcode 0xC2, which is a Data-In command), DeviceIoControl returns TRUE (Success). But I did not get the correct buffer back from the SSD.

3. I did not face the issue above on IRST 19.0.0.1067, it only happened on IRST21.0.0.1033.

(Note: I also tried using Microsoft's standard IOCTL_STORAGE_PROTOCOL_COMMAND as an alternative, but it immediately returned FALSE with GetLastError() == 1 (ERROR_INVALID_FUNCTION) under this VMD environment.)

My Questions:

1. What is Intel's officially recommended method or IOCTL to send NVMe Vendor Specific Commands (with Data-In) to an SSD under IRST 21.0.0.1033?
2. Why do I get the wrong buffer under IRST 21.0.0.1033, while the exact same code and structure worked perfectly fine under IRST 19.0.0.1067? Is there a new security restriction?

Thanks,

Wkao

It happened on both my win10 and win11, the SSU log as attachment.

[Manas_Intel]

Hi @wkao,

Please accept our sincere apologies for the delay in getting back to you. We know how crucial timely technical insights are when you are deep into SSD tool development, and we truly appreciate your patience while we carefully reviewed your case.

Thank you for providing such a detailed breakdown of your setup, the exact symptoms, and the SSU logs. We truly appreciate the thoroughness of your report as an SSD tool developer.

Regarding the behavior of the Intel RST VMD driver version 21.0.0.1033, we found that because you are using an OEM-customized driver obtained directly from your motherboard manufacturer/Microsoft Update Catalog, support and troubleshooting for driver-specific behaviors in this distribution need to be handled through your hardware vendor.

We kindly advise you to reach out directly to your motherboard manufacturer or system OEM for further assistance with this driver version and the vendor-specific pass-through behavior.

As a result, we will be closing this support thread, which means it will no longer be actively monitored by our team.

Thank you once again for reaching out to Intel Support, and we wish you the best with your SSD tool development.