Unneeded home server upgrade I don't need but want to do

[Octopuss]

Well no, I don't have the drives, the primary point of the thread was to figure out what exactly I want
I just want M.2 NVMe. And yes, I guess I am limited to 2280.

 

[Blue4130]

Well no, I don't have the drives, the primary point of the thread was to figure out what exactly I want
I just want M.2 NVMe. And yes, I guess I am limited to 2280.

Than any motherboard that you like and this card (or one similar)

M.2 8x4 Silent Gen4 PCIe Card - SONNETTECH

Eight M.2 NVMe SSD slots on a PCIe 4.0 x16 card. Silent operation. Add your own ultra-fast SSDs for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

www.sonnettech.com

Doesn't require bifurcation. Works on linux, windows or osx. PCIE 4.0. 8 slots so that you can expand in the future.

 

[Octopuss]

Hold on, how does this work? Does it say it combines the SSDs into "one"? I need the TrueNAS VM to see individual drives so the array can be created.
Or did I misunderstand what the card does?

 

[Blue4130]

Hold on, how does this work? Does it say it combines the SSDs into "one"? I need the TrueNAS VM to see individual drives so the array can be created.
Or did I misunderstand what the card does?

It passes the drives though to the host system to deal with apparently. So you would set up the raid array like usual in Truenas.

 

[jode]

Hold on, how does this work? Does it say it combines the SSDs into "one"? I need the TrueNAS VM to see individual drives so the array can be created.
Or did I misunderstand what the card does?

From the manufacturer website:
"Sonnet M.2 8x4 Silent Gen4 PCIe Card is a full-height, full-length PCIe 4.0 card with a 48-lane PCIe 4.0 switch and x16 interface, designed to support maximum performance."

 

[Octopuss]

So they don't really say for certain...

 

[Blue4130]

So they don't really say for certain...

They do in the manual. It says that drives need to be initialized as a raid in the host OS, not on a card level.

 

[Octopuss]

Nice. So that will work (even at somewhat lower speeds) even with the x710 NIC in the other x8 slot?

 

[Blue4130]

Nice. So that will work (even at somewhat lower speeds) even with the x710 NIC in the other x8 slot?

If you are sticking with your current motherboard, I don't see why not. But be aware that it is an $800 card without the ssd'd. Not cheap, but yo are kind of painting yourself in a corner with your requirements.

If you are serious about getting it, I'd verify with their support that it does pass through the bare drives, or at least lets you assign them as individual virtual drives.

 

[jode]

But be aware that it is an $800 card without the ssd'd. Not cheap, but yo are kind of painting yourself in a corner with your requirements.

There is probably not a noticeable slowdown using a similar Gen3 adapter. E.g. Are you a human?

The $600+ savings can be used for other things.

 

[TrevorH]

OTOH if you are spending $800 on just an adapter you could probably replace both processor and motherboard with newer ones that include several built-in M.2 slots. It would be more expensive to do that as part of this but you probably have plans to replace them sometime anyway.

 

[nexox]

A PCIe switch used like this is kind of like a network switch, almost transparent to the host, there's just an additional hop to get to the device and if you look in the right place on the OS you will be able to see that, but otherwise you just get PCIe devices as if they were connected the usual way. Most PCIe switches don't know anything about NVMe or storage, you could drop an M.2 Ethernet adapter into one of those cards and it would work.

So that will work (even at somewhat lower speeds) even with the x710 NIC in the other x8 slot?

As I recall from your current motherboard specs both slots are hard-wired to x8 so it doesn't matter what the other slot is doing, and you'll be limited by the ~6GB/s 3.0x8 bandwidth, which will be shared by whichever devices are doing active IO at any given time. That isn't so slow.

 

[Octopuss]

$800? What? Ok nevermind, I didn't notice that, lmao.

 

[Octopuss]

So is there any such card that doesn't cost more than say $100 equivalent that lets me connect 4xM.2 SSDs?
I guess I will need it even if I go with the server upgrade because neither board explicitly states bifurcation support. Might as well keep using a friggin'HBA if these things cost this much, lmao.

 

[jode]

So is there any such card that doesn't cost more than say $100 equivalent that lets me connect 4xM.2 SSDs?

The link offered in https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...-i-dont-need-but-want-to-do.52037/post-484732 renders funny but links to such a card @ $149

 

[Blue4130]

$800? What? Ok nevermind, I didn't notice that, lmao.

Can you get over your requirement of PCIE gen 4? At Gen 3 there are cheaper options.

 

[Octopuss]

I never said anything about requiring PCIe 4?

 

[nilfisk_urd]

Try to get a ASMedia ASM2824 based card, this should support ASPM.

 

[Blue4130]

I never said anything about requiring PCIe 4?

My mistake, I thought you did in one of the posts eiterh here or LTT (you had posted there also, correct?)

In that case, they have a 4 port gen 3 also that is cheaper.

 

[Greg_E]

What do you need/want to know about getting XCP-ng up and running? I haven't read the entire thread, but getting this going is no big deal at all, especially if it is just a single host on a single network.

Migrating your VMs might be the harder part in this process.