Playing whack a mole with NVMe drives

[ipreferpie]

I finally got my Intel D4502 U.2 7.68TB drives to be read. But unfortunately, everytime I reboot the ESXi 6.7U3 host, they randomly disappear then appear again after some reboots. It may take 2-10 reboots to have both drives appearing.

They’re attached via AOC-SLG3-4E4T then BPN-SAS3-846-8N. The same 905P Optane drive is always detected on the setup. But for the D4502, they randomly appear or disappear after reboots. Does anyone have experience solving this issue with NVMe drives acting like this? I’m suspecting driver issues but not sure how I should troubleshooting it. Thermal throttling isn’t an issue since the drives are operating between 35-45C with no spikes.

 

[sth]

I had exactly this problem with NVMe drives and for the life of me couldn't figure it out. Supermicro wrote it off as a incompatibility between my AOC-SLG3-4E4T and X10 motherboard. I didn't solve it sadly and moved to SAS drives in the end as I ran out of air to pull out.
You could eliminate driver issues by seeing if they are detected in the BIOS on boot. Mine would fail to show there.
I have seen some more positive comments on NVMe and the AOC-SLG3-4E4T so hopefully a solvable issue now.

 

[ipreferpie]

I had exactly this problem with NVMe drives and for the life of me couldn't figure it out. Supermicro wrote it off as a incompatibility between my AOC-SLG3-4E4T and X10 motherboard. I didn't solve it sadly and moved to SAS drives in the end as I ran out of air to pull out.
You could eliminate driver issues by seeing if they are detected in the BIOS on boot. Mine would fail to show there.
I have seen some more positive comments on NVMe and the AOC-SLG3-4E4T so hopefully a solvable issue now.

Hmmm -- that's disappointing to hear. I'm quite invested into my NVMe setup and can't tell if it's a VMWare or 4E4T or SSD causing this. My Optanes are appearing fine after every reboot however.

When I check BIOS for boot options, no NVMe show up (including Optane) but the Optane shows up for ESXi. Is that normal or do I need any OpROMs enabled to see that?

I see that in boot options, I can do EFI or Legacy for the 4E4T, INT19 Trap Response, and also choose AMI compatibility for NVMe boot. Played with all the combos but nothing seems to improve.