Dell R640 NVMe. What do I miss?

[Nipp]

Hi team!

More of my R640 adventures. I got it with 10x2.5 SAS configuration, with H730p RAID. Idea is to add the 2-5 and 6-9 cables to use it in full NVMe ZFS. I am getting some bumps in a road with it.

1. I got cables, 6-9 first, 2-5 later, when the first cable seemed to work.
2. DC P3600 from eBay and a U.2 to PCIe adapter to check if it works. When I plugged it into my main PC, it went kaput - I use the NVMe RAID, so I dismissed this as a drivers quirk. Plugged that contraption into Dell - it shows the device in the PCIe inventory.
3. Plugged it into bay 6, it seems to "work":
   
4. ...bu-u-ut... It's not visible anywhere in the storage:
   
   Interesting that it shows slots as PCIe capable, but it reports as "Slot Empty".
5. When I try to run the installer, Ubuntu gives me this:
   
   
6. But it does "see it" in the lspci:
   
7. The M.2 to U.2 experiment: I got an IcyDock from Amazon, stuffed my old Samsung M.2 into it and plugged into Slot 7. Nothing. It gives me a green light on the caddy and absolutely nothing on the system inventory. When I unplug it, it logs the warning for the removed disk and nothing more. I wonder if it's not happy about the drive itself.
   I will try to plug a different M.2 and/or try it in the PCIe adapter

So I wonder if I am missing something or it supposed to work like this? If my DC P3600 is defective? I never saw it work. Is there more to U.2 on R640 then just a cable to backplane? Why it won't let me configure the server with H730 and only offer HBA330 mini? Does it play any role in this?

People with the R640 and NVMe, please help!
Thank you.

 

[mattventura]

What do `nvme list`, `lsscsi`, and `lsblk` show?

 

[Nipp]

What do `nvme list`, `lsscsi`, and `lsblk` show?

That's a great idea. I will try it first thing tomorrow.

PS: That M.2 to U.2 adapter is no good. I plugged it into PCIe slot and it does the same. Slot shows empty. I will try a different M.2 drive. One I have it there is ancient it was the first Samsung PCIe NVMe. Perhaps it's bit too old.

 

[mattventura]

Oh, just thought of one more thing - check `dmesg` to see if there's any error about an 'unsupported sector size' - it's possible that they're formatted as 520 or some other oddball sector size.

 

[Nipp]

Digging through the dmesg

That's it.

lsscsi doesn't see anything:

nvme list gives me empty.

Nothing about the sector size. Seems like a dead SSD to me.

 

[mattventura]

If it doesn't work even on another system, yeah I'd say it's dead.

 

[Nipp]

Smartctl gives me this:

I think it's better to return this one.