Various embodiments for implementing a method and apparatus for accessing multiple storage devices from multiple hosts without use of remote direct memory access (RDMA) as disclosed herein include: providing a data store switch fabric enabling data communications between a data storage access system and a plurality of compute nodes, each compute node having integrated compute capabilities, data storage, and a network interface controller (Host NIC); providing a plurality of physical data storage devices; providing a host bus adapter (HBA) in data communication with the plurality of physical data storage devices and the plurality of compute nodes via the data store switch fabric, the HBA including at least one submission queue and a corresponding shadow queue; receiving an input/output (I/O) request from the plurality of compute nodes; including an element of the I/O request to the at least one submission queue; and including additional information related to the element of the at least one submission queue to the corresponding shadow queue.