MS-01 HBA / NAS expansion Question

[Tlex]

I would like to build a 1u rackmount nas enclosure attached to my MS-01.
Ideally 16 nvme modules using 2 * 5.25 slots but I havent found a short chassis of 1u with 2 x 5.25 slots yet. If you have any idea for that it would great.
The 5.25 to nvme modules I want to use are these : MB873MP-B V2_8 Bay M.2 NVMe SSD PCIe 4.0 Mobile Rack Enclosure for External 5.25" Drive Bay (8 x OCuLink SFF-8612)

Now, I have zero experience with nas / hba. Could somebody be kind enough to help me with the gear I would need to accomplish this ?
I guess I need a hba card in the MS-01, cables going to the enclosure, a second card in the enclosure connected to some power source ?, Internal cables to the 5.25 modules ?

Any help greatly appreciated.

 

[gics]

Hi, I am looking into a DAS (it is more DAS than NAS, right?) for the MS-01 also.
Unfortunately your plan will probably not work because the PCIe Slot doesn't support bifurcation

But, I am a noob myself and will happily stand corrected.

 

[randalldeflagg]

Hi, I am looking into a DAS (it is more DAS than NAS, right?) for the MS-01 also.
Unfortunately your plan will probably not work because the PCIe Slot doesn't support bifurcation

But, I am a noob myself and will happily stand corrected.

Not sure why you would need bifurcation for HBA card, that is typically handled on board of the controller via a switch. The broadcom 9400-16i will do the trick. The bottle neck will be the CPU.

As for the specific short depth case, something like this would work: 5.25 inch half-height drive bay Rack | UM-BAY-201 | racknex
its not enclosed

 

[Tlex]

Not sure why you would need bifurcation for HBA card, that is typically handled on board of the controller via a switch. The broadcom 9400-16i will do the trick. The bottle neck will be the CPU.

As for the specific short depth case, something like this would work: 5.25 inch half-height drive bay Rack | UM-BAY-201 | racknex
its not enclosed

Thanks for that,
I'm just concerned because I don't know how I would feed current to the the icedock units and what kind of cable from the hba to it since that would be from external connectors to OCuLink SFF-8612 right ?

 

[randalldeflagg]

Thanks for that,
I'm just concerned because I don't know how I would feed current to the the icedock units and what kind of cable from the hba to it since that would be from external connectors to OCuLink SFF-8612 right ?

Dunno about the cables, but willing to bet they make external to internal cables because people are odd. Or find a pass through adapter that converts it. As for power. Grab a SFX power supply. Stick a relay on it to power up when the MS01 does

 

[mattventura]

16 NVMe modules would require 64 lanes to get full bandwidth. You're not getting that out of an MS-01 without some kind of switch card.

If you want to go for the DAS route, you'd need to put an external PCIe adapter in the MS-01, and then some kind of external PCIe switch/jbod to house the drives. It would probably be pointless to do 16 drives because it would just bottleneck on the 16 lanes back to the MS-01.

For the NAS route, it would probably also bottleneck, but would require less specialized hardware. You'd just need an extremely fast network card. You'd also need something with a powerful CPU to actually be able to process that much I/O.

You don't need bifurcation when using switching. However, the 9400 and other similar cards are bad at this, because they translate the NVMe devices to look like SAS devices to the host, which means the host can't use the NVMe software stack which is much better for high-performance solid state storage.

 

[gics]

okay, thanks for the correction. I just read this on the product webpage (see OP's link) and thought this would be a dealbreaker. Happy that it is not!

"Note: To utilize an M.2, U.2, or U.3 NVMe SSD in a PCIe 16x or 8x slot, the motherboard or add-on card must support PCIe Bifurcation. This mode divides PCIe lanes into specific configurations like x4, x4, x4, x4 for a 16x slot or x4, x4 for an 8x slot, ensuring the SSD can be read by the system. For compatible hardware, please refer to the FAQ section. If your hardware is not listed there, please contact us for assistance."