Request for help: Retrofit test server for 2.5" NVMe PCIe SSDs

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abulafia

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Jun 17, 2014
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I had been looking at the Supermicros while shopping what eventually because a "right now because I can use it regardless" Intel 750 card purchase, but 2.5 is obviously more appealing - but along the way I came across things like
M.2 PCI-e I/F to mini SAS SFF-8087 and M.2 SATA I/F t SATA III
with some doing 4x M.2 to SFF 8087... the first time I came across something like this I assumed it was just a SAS/SATA breakout, just on a PCB, but this explicitly specs PCIe M.2 cards. Anyone have any experience with these? Can they run to a SAS3 card? I'm assuming that at $20 (even at) volume/direct retail with spec'ing buck boost converters, there is no bridge logic in that price...

Also, if anyone has one of the Supermicros, are they board specific or can I use them in my X9 2011 and X10 1150 boards? Don't care if they are bootable - this is for media creation (Lightroom DB, photo/video/audio scratch files), archive or system backup volume(s) tiering, or VM hosting.
SATA3 is the new "ESX boot USB" :) I only care that my boot disk is uncorrupted (cap backed flushing) and TPM+HW AES encrypted.
 

Deci

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Feb 15, 2015
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the SAS cable will be for carrying PCI-e lanes, similar to the cables that come with the intel 2.5" drives and the m.2 converters to the sas plug.
 

Chuntzu

Active Member
Jun 30, 2013
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OK so I purchased:
1x New Supermicro AOC SLG3 2E4R Nvme Card 2 Internal Nvme Ports | eBay
and Intel 750 Series SSDPE2MW400G4R5 2 5" 400GB PCIe Nvme 3 0 x4 MLC Internal Solid | eBay x1 (just for the cable really)

Should be all set for NVMe now. Will try getting some pics before my Budapest / Vienna trip.
I can't wait to hear how this works! 1-1.4million read iops here you come! I'm curious what ceiling would be for one dual processor system and iops (read and write) with these nvme drives (by this I mean any nvme drive). I read about mellanox and nvme over fabric with some servers with 4 drives hit 2.5 million iops. Would the CPUs be saturated with 4,6,8,10,12....drives? It sure would be fun to find out :)! My wife's gonna kill me if/when I start doing this. Haha
 

Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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I can't wait to hear how this works! 1-1.4million read iops here you come! I'm curious what ceiling would be for one dual processor system and iops (read and write) with these nvme drives (by this I mean any nvme drive). I read about mellanox and nvme over fabric with some servers with 4 drives hit 2.5 million iops. Would the CPUs be saturated with 4,6,8,10,12....drives? It sure would be fun to find out :)! My wife's gonna kill me if/when I start doing this. Haha
I am hoping to just get to one or two working this week. Hopefully get into 10+ when I get back.
 
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Chuntzu

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Jun 30, 2013
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@Patrick Can't wait! And now time to start selling off the rest of my extra equipment so I can purchase a bunch of these. Was doing some thinking today while driving to work...these nvme cards are actually a pretty decent deal. If just doing an aic not the 2.5" you are saving the cost of a SAS hba ($100ish) and if you purchase 4 256gb consumer ssds $100ish ea looking at $500 for 512gb raid10 set up with higher latency and lower iops for reads maybe better write iops from the 4ssds, but still with such new technology I imagined the mark up being out of reach for a while as opposed to being a cheaper better option in so scenarios. I was pleasantly surprised upon this thought, perhaps more so because it is helping me justify buying a crap load of new ssds (bahahaha! Think mad scientist laughing)!!!
 

ehorn

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Jun 21, 2012
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I can't wait to hear how this works! 1-1.4million read iops here you come! I'm curious what ceiling would be for one dual processor system and iops (read and write) with these nvme drives (by this I mean any nvme drive). I read about mellanox and nvme over fabric with some servers with 4 drives hit 2.5 million iops. Would the CPUs be saturated with 4,6,8,10,12....drives? It sure would be fun to find out :)! My wife's gonna kill me if/when I start doing this. Haha
Was it the mangstor demo?
performance-demos | www.mangstor.com
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZKiLzIwSpOQ

Nvme is so fast, it does push the bottleneck back to the cpu. Lol... Crazy times for storage.
 
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ehorn

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Jun 21, 2012
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Pcper was performance testing a p3700 on an over clocked i7-4770k and saw over 50% cup utilization. Albeit, I'm sure they were stacking queues for testing. But, These drives will take all the horsepower you can throw at them. It's gonna take a lot of hardware to push several of these these things to the limit...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=NL_jzPCrdog


Nvme is definitely here to stay.
 

Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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Got the Intel 750 400GB AIC and 2.5" drive today... no Supermicro card yet :-/
 

Chuntzu

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Jun 30, 2013
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I hope the setup goes well, I would like to try these nvme drives in a storage spaces direct setup and see what I can hit iops and max throughput