F2uSoe: 12 Hot swap NVME Drives in a 2U, the Intel NVMe Cage works with SuperMicro Card.

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Naeblis

Active Member
Oct 22, 2015
168
123
43
Folsom, CA
After overcoming my disappointment of not getting 25GBs I decided to tinker around with the SuperMicro AOC-SLG3-2E4 card. I found a solution to the hard to find NVMe cables for those people who did not purchase a intel 750


What would happen if I connected the SuperMicro card using a standard SAS3 cable directly to the Intel NVMe expansion cage? Turns out it works perfectly

upload_2015-11-28_15-30-54.png


  • No special Cable needed
  • I would assume that you can put this cage in other servers
  • Hot Swappable drive
  • No trying to figure out where to mount all of these drives on the inside of a server
upload_2015-11-28_15-33-24.png

Yes I do get that spending 500 on a cage is expensive. However, if we figure out a way to just source the cage and not the riser and the 4 port card it could be much cheaper. On the other hand for I don't think that for Enterprise use the expense for 4 drives using 2 PCI slots would be a show stopper. ($1000.00)

follow the yellow brick road from the SuperMicro card to the Intel cage.

upload_2015-11-28_15-33-47.png
 
Last edited:

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
The Intel one pictured requires a special PCIe riser with proper PCIe lane bifurcation. I now have three Intel servers with these and did try using the card in a normal PCIe slot to suboptimal results.
 

zer0gravity

Active Member
Feb 15, 2013
427
82
28
Yea currently, I have 2x of the supermicro cards AOC-SLG2-2E4. Just wish there was a 4 or 8 port card, I thought Dell or supermicro would make one by now.
 

Naeblis

Active Member
Oct 22, 2015
168
123
43
Folsom, CA
Yea currently, I have 2x of the supermicro cards AOC-SLG2-2E4. Just wish there was a 4 or 8 port card, I thought Dell or supermicro would make one by now.

4 port cards requires special bios support to divide the 16 into 4x4. the supermacro card "R" has a chip built in. I would guess that if they could have gone 4x they would have.

with the backplane you can use 2 cards and 4 normal SASHD cables and get 4 hotswapple drives. Tomorrow I will know if i have a reliable source for just the backplane from the intel NVMe kit.
 

Naeblis

Active Member
Oct 22, 2015
168
123
43
Folsom, CA
Today the 3rd Intel cage showed up. @T_Minus will be happy that I can finally deliver the last 2 NVMe cables.

Using 2 SuperMicro Cards and 4 normal Mini SAS HD cables I was able to put the last 4 NVMe Drives in the server.
upload_2015-12-8_20-27-45.png

Top down we can see that, on the outer drive bays, 8 NVMe drives are connected using the 2 Intel Risers + their special cards. The middle 4 are using the 2 SuperMicro cards. 10 500GB SATA drives + 1 hot spare make up my tier 2 storage.

upload_2015-12-8_20-29-22.png

Routing 15 cables, for 23 drives :D, to the front of the server was a bit of a challenge. However I do think the build turned out relatively clean.

upload_2015-12-8_20-30-9.png
 
Last edited:

whitey

Moderator
Jun 30, 2014
2,766
868
113
41
Tier 2 storage...LOL you kid I hope, what's your tier1 or 0 stg platform look like?
 

Dsigma

New Member
Aug 15, 2015
10
17
3
40
Awesome.
How did you get two A2U44X25NVMEDK working in one R2208WT?
According to Intel R2000WT TPS, the A2U44X25NVMEDK 4 port add-in card can only work in Riser slot#2, how did you make it work in Riser slot#1 ?
 

Naeblis

Active Member
Oct 22, 2015
168
123
43
Folsom, CA
Awesome.
How did you get two A2U44X25NVMEDK working in one R2208WT?
According to Intel R2000WT TPS, the A2U44X25NVMEDK 4 port add-in card can only work in Riser slot#2, how did you make it work in Riser slot#1 ?
You can set the bifurcation to x4 x4 x4 x4 for riser one in the BIOS
 

Delo123

New Member
May 12, 2016
3
1
3
44
You can set the bifurcation to x4 x4 x4 x4 for riser one in the BIOS
Hi, i have just build the A2U44X25NVMEDK nvme bay into an Intel R2216GZ4 and updated bios etc. However only 1 nvme is detected, always the one in the first slot. Cables should be ok since slot 1 and 2 are shared by the same cable. I have read the riser2 (which i replaced with the included 2 slot 16x/8x riser) should be setup in the bios as x4 x4 x4 x4 slot but i cannot find these options. Only thing i can find is Socket1 and 2 PCIe ports speed links, but they can only be setup to Gen2/Gen3 5 or 8GT/s), could someone point me in the right direction?

Thx
 

Delo123

New Member
May 12, 2016
3
1
3
44
Answered my own question. I didn't realize S2600GZ (Intel V2) isn't supported, is has to be a WT (V3 or up) to be usable. I kind of missed that "little detail"... anyway, now to get some WT's
 
  • Like
Reactions: Patrick