NVMe in a 1u (no riser)

[Geran]

Thought some people might be interested in one or many of these:

Holchips M.2 Adapter PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1U Riser PCI Express Carrier board | eBay

 

[BlueFox]

These are actually sold by someone on this very forum. Here's the discussion thread: Cheap 1U PCIe M.2 Riser - why don't they exist?

 

[Geran]

These are actually sold by someone on this very forum. Here's the discussion thread: Cheap 1U PCIe M.2 Riser - why don't they exist?

Didn't know that...my bad. I'll ask Patrick to remove this post

 

[Patrick]

@Geran and @BlueFox

I saw the first post, ordered 4, then saw the other thread Cheap 1U PCIe M.2 Riser - why don't they exist?

This is awesome!

 

[Geran]

@Geran and @BlueFox

I saw the first post, ordered 4, then saw the other thread Cheap 1U PCIe M.2 Riser - why don't they exist?

This is awesome!

Yes it is, now need to get some SSDs to fill the 5 I bought . Any recommendations?

 

[Patrick]

Yes it is, now need to get some SSDs to fill the 5 I bought . Any recommendations?

Not the fastest, but with power loss protection and dirt cheap *100 Hrs* Samsung PM953 MZ1LV960HCJH-000MU 960GB M.2 Enterprise SSD PCIe Gen3 x4 | eBay

The next cheapest 960GB NVMe (U.2, PCIe AIC, or M.2) SSD I see on ebay is Seagate Nytro XF1440 SSD ST960KN0001 960GB 2.5" Internal PCIe 3.0 x4 (NVMe) 1TB | eBay

 

[T_Minus]

What's the point of using those 960GB slow drives?

Seems too much $$ and capacity to be boot drives, too slow to be anything else you'd use NVME for...?

What am I missing.

 

[Patrick]

What's the point of using those 960GB slow drives?

Seems too much $$ and capacity to be boot drives, too slow to be anything else you'd use NVME for...?

What am I missing.

Faster than SATA but slow for NVMe.

At $300 you can get faster TLC drives without PLP. But there are only so many m.2 NVMe options with PLP that are inexpensive these days.

 

[T_Minus]

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I mean what's the use case?

 

[Patrick]

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I mean what's the use case?

I have a few 1U servers that have a bunch of PCIe slots that are otherwise unusable. The hope is that these let me add a faster than SATA capacity tier into existing systems. ~4TB for 1100 is not bad.

At some point it is about capacity in a limited 1U chassis.

Another case I want to try is simply using them in test machines to see if they are easy to use. Linux-Bench2 now uses over 200GB of disk space so finding something that I can deploy widely in the future is important.

 

[I_D]

Like T_Minus, I don't understand the use case.
To me, for only 4TB that seems like a lot of money.
There must be a better way to provide fast and cheap storage to your 1U servers?
If they only have 1 PCI-E card, put a fast network card in it and provide storage over the network from a larger storage?
What am I missing?

 

[K D]

I see benefit of this one.

This is an easy way to add NVMe to 1u servers. Take for example a supermicro 6018R-M server. The motherboard in it has 5 pcie 3 slots, which will go unused in a 1u chassis as you can at the most use 1 AiC with a riser. There is no way to add a fast nvme drive to this server.

Using the product here gives you the ability to use all the available pcie slots instead of just one with a riser. Let's you add more nvme where it was not possible previously.

Whether you need 400gb or 4TB is different and will be based what you do.

 

[Marsh]

Asus RS720Q-E8-RS8-P 2U 4 nodes server have 2 pcie slot , one slot takes standard LP card, the other slot takes ASUS special physical size card.

My hope is that this adapter would work and fit into the ASUS special slot.
I have 8 nodes but only brought 4 adapters to try out.