4x NVME to PCIE with PLX
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Got one of those in my Dell T7820 flex bay. Unfortunately that limit the speed to the onboard SAS controller.
I just read the Viking's product brief and realized: the damned thing is dual ported 
The ability to utilize cheaper 2280 (not cheap... just 'less wallet killing' / cheap-'er' lol) within a dual-host storage solution seems quite appealing imo. The fact that the thing is gen 3 is actually a benefit to me, as (at least with all the PCIe storage I've worked with) it uses significantly less power; enough that I don't necessarily have to worry so much about beefing up cooling nearly as much. All U.2 typically necessitates some form of cooling, so most systems with such slots will usually have *something* to deal with that to some degree, and not having to mess with anything more on whatever platform I'm using than the storage itself is kinda nice.
For me at least, I'd almost rather have more gen 3 lanes at their lower rated speeds than fewer gen 4/5 at their faster rates, even if the sum of all the gen 4/5 lane have higher overall throughput...
The move from HDD to SATA SSD was tectonic, world changing even. Then from SATA SSD to NVME was quite significant, just not the 'omg I'm in the future now' sort of feeling. The improvements since then, while not insignificant at all (quite the opposite), just aren't 'felt' as much (to me at least), and I've found that as long as there's ample gen 3 lanes, I don't really feel like I'm lacking much in the way of performance / responsiveness in day to day usage (well, not for the systems/applications I've delt with anyway).
The ability to utilize cheaper 2280 (not cheap... just 'less wallet killing' / cheap-'er' lol) within a dual-host storage solution seems quite appealing imo. The fact that the thing is gen 3 is actually a benefit to me, as (at least with all the PCIe storage I've worked with) it uses significantly less power; enough that I don't necessarily have to worry so much about beefing up cooling nearly as much. All U.2 typically necessitates some form of cooling, so most systems with such slots will usually have *something* to deal with that to some degree, and not having to mess with anything more on whatever platform I'm using than the storage itself is kinda nice.
For me at least, I'd almost rather have more gen 3 lanes at their lower rated speeds than fewer gen 4/5 at their faster rates, even if the sum of all the gen 4/5 lane have higher overall throughput...
The move from HDD to SATA SSD was tectonic, world changing even. Then from SATA SSD to NVME was quite significant, just not the 'omg I'm in the future now' sort of feeling. The improvements since then, while not insignificant at all (quite the opposite), just aren't 'felt' as much (to me at least), and I've found that as long as there's ample gen 3 lanes, I don't really feel like I'm lacking much in the way of performance / responsiveness in day to day usage (well, not for the systems/applications I've delt with anyway).
Have some (think up to 8) laying around and open to sale. Located Europe (Germany). Drop me a pm if interested.
For those in Germany:
Viking U20040-02 2.5" U.2 NVMe SSD Module | eBay.de
Mit seiner fortschrittlichen Architektur und umfangreichen Spezifikationen bietet es herausragende Leistung und Zuverlässigkeit. Es ist sofort einsatzbereit und bietet eine zuverlässige Speicherlösung für anspruchsvolle Anwendungen.
www.ebay.de
That’s why I wrote Germany and not DACH or EU.
Have still some for sale and would ship to CH, although shipping costs from GE to CH are insane. Drop me a pm if interested
well it says it can dual-port "with a custom pci-e driver", not sure how much of a PITA OS / kernel support / finding the actual driver would be>?I just read the Viking's product brief and realized: the damned thing is dual ported
The ability to utilize cheaper 2280 (not cheap... just 'less wallet killing' / cheap-'er' lol) within a dual-host storage solution seems quite appealing imo. The fact that the thing is gen 3 is actually a benefit to me, as (at least with all the PCIe storage I've worked with) it uses significantly less power; enough that I don't necessarily have to worry so much about beefing up cooling nearly as much. All U.2 typically necessitates some form of cooling, so most systems with such slots will usually have *something* to deal with that to some degree, and not having to mess with anything more on whatever platform I'm using than the storage itself is kinda nice.
For me at least, I'd almost rather have more gen 3 lanes at their lower rated speeds than fewer gen 4/5 at their faster rates, even if the sum of all the gen 4/5 lane have higher overall throughput...
The move from HDD to SATA SSD was tectonic, world changing even. Then from SATA SSD to NVME was quite significant, just not the 'omg I'm in the future now' sort of feeling. The improvements since then, while not insignificant at all (quite the opposite), just aren't 'felt' as much (to me at least), and I've found that as long as there's ample gen 3 lanes, I don't really feel like I'm lacking much in the way of performance / responsiveness in day to day usage (well, not for the systems/applications I've delt with anyway).
I also saw a mention of a utility to go with it, anybody has that?
It looks like these guys are a PM8531 under the hood, does anybody have any documentation or configuration utilities to change their port configs? I am currently playing with it in a dual port system, working to figure out how everything is connecting through the crazy complicated backplanes.
EDIT: I found an official micro-semi config utility that seems to be able to completely re-configure the devices. It is on github here: GitHub - Microsemi/switchtec-user: Userspace code for the Microsemi PCIe switch
EDIT: I found an official micro-semi config utility that seems to be able to completely re-configure the devices. It is on github here: GitHub - Microsemi/switchtec-user: Userspace code for the Microsemi PCIe switch
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I had more time to play with these this weekend. By default the v2 adapters I received were configured to link at x2 to each SSD. Using the utility above I was able to change each link to either a x1 or x4. However, the utility did not want to configure the uplink port to the 2x2 configuration I wanted. Going to spend more time this week trying to re-configure these guys.
Could you configure the m.2 slots to 2x2? I believe that would let you use both the Optane and TLC volumes of those super cheap Intel hybrid drives.
I have not tried yet. My main focus has been getting the upstream ports to play nicely, unsuccessfully so far. I can mess with that this weekend sometime.
Do you have an ebay link for one of these? I wasn't able to explicitly configure the port as 2x2 butcan test with one if they are reasonably cheap to just play with.
Actually now I don't see any cheap ones, lowest price I can find is $20 for 16/256GB (HP 14m-dh1003dx Intel 16GB/256GB NVMe M.2 SSD Solid State Drive HBRPEKNX0101AH | eBay), which isn't great, I thought 32/512GB models were like $15, which could be compelling if you could get four working in one of those U.2 carriers.
Right now I think it might be possible to get 2 of them working in the carriers using only the public command utilities. It looks like the PCIe switch will require modification of the boot config to get more.
The carrier won't let you create more than 4 logical end points and only ports 1 and 4 can actually be configured to a x4 link. Ports 2 and 3 appear to have a x4 link routed but it is disabled by the firmware config.
Additionally, any changes from the user utility are non-persistent, they will disappear with a reboot.
The next thing I will be poking at is seeing if there is a way to find the "config file" within the ROM or if that is a fully compiled blob.
The carrier won't let you create more than 4 logical end points and only ports 1 and 4 can actually be configured to a x4 link. Ports 2 and 3 appear to have a x4 link routed but it is disabled by the firmware config.
Additionally, any changes from the user utility are non-persistent, they will disappear with a reboot.
The next thing I will be poking at is seeing if there is a way to find the "config file" within the ROM or if that is a fully compiled blob.