Mechanisms for SAS-free cabling in Rack Scale Design (RSD) environments and associated methods, apparatus, and systems. Pooled compute drawers containing multiple compute nodes are coupled to pooled storage drawers using fabric infrastructure, such as Ethernet links and switches. The pooled storage drawers includes a storage distributor that is coupled to a plurality of storage devices and includes one or more fabric ports and a PCIe switch with multiple PCIe ports. Under one configuration, the PCIe ports are connected to one or more IO hubs including a PCIe switch coupled to multiple storage device interfaces that are coupled to the storage devices. In another configuration, the PCIe ports are connected directly to PCIe storage devices. The storage distributor implements a NVMe-oF server driver that interacts with an NVMe-oF client driver running on compute nodes or a fabric switch. The drivers logically couple the storage devices over the fabric infrastructure to the compute nodes in a manner that appears the storage devices are local devices.