Whats the deal with U.2 enterprise SSDs selling so cheap?
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Why, are they artificially hardware-locking drives now?
Hardware locking should be completely illegal.
I have an HPE NVMe drive cage - 826689-B21, I have tried every trick in the book to make it work outside a non HPE chassis and no luck. The NVMe cables HPE uses appear to be SlimSAS 8i but apparently they're wired differently? Or then it's something to do with the power connector - it's a MicroFit instead of the usual MiniFit used for power connectors. Also the drive caddies themselves are 'active' and the whole thing depends on the BIOS and/or MicroSemi controller chips knowing about the drive cages and turning on/off the fancy lights on the caddies
For whatever reason, HPE likes locking down their hardware and it's all to do with $$$ instead of any other rationale for design choices - this has come back to bite them quite a few times. Now that MicroSemi isn't doing RAID controllers, HPE is busy backpedalling and trying to sell 'passive' caddies that don't have fancy lights and don't need an active connection. But that means taking out your drive cage as well and replacing everything
Oh and HPE never sells the caddies, they are always sold with the drives. Right now I don't think HPE or anyone locks drives - but at some point, some bean counter in HPE is going to go 'hey what if we locked NVMe disks to the mainboard, the way you can lock AMD CPUs?' ...
Never considered that - although I did check HPE and the U.3 enablement kit has different cages and part numbers. The U.2 enablement kit specifically calls out the B826689-B21
Newest powervault box (got 24 slot one for try&buy) does indeed come with drm ssd disks that are unusable outside of it (and you cannot insert any other than specified disks into it). - tried to run them on r640, failed.
I can totally understand disclaimers such as "we cannot guarantee validated performance unless used with correct hardware". That is totally legit. Any intentional sabotage of compatibility, drm lock-ins or lock-outs, or intentional redesigns that serve no other function than locking in or out other otherwise standard components ought to be completely illegal.
Like Federal - "pound me up the ass" Prison illegal...
Enterprise, consumer, it doesn't matter. Everything should be open standards compliant.
Compete by doing the thing better than everyone else, not by intentionally making changes to lock any competition out. That should be just straight up plain illegal (and potentially already is a violation of the poorly enforced Sherman act)
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No one sued them, so its fair game. (someone did sue them in some older ?nahalem? gen poweredge systems as prior it was only allowing dell branded disks all together.)
The dell branded ssd's for r650 also come in with caddies, and screws glued into disk.
*they've changed caddies design in r640, r650's from r630 default design (so you have to unscrew those caddies to use in r640/r630 -- 40% success chance to unscrew, 60% you have to break those caddies off to unscrew)
one of tech's at work been helping me with them
The dell branded ssd's for r650 also come in with caddies, and screws glued into disk.
*they've changed caddies design in r640, r650's from r630 default design (so you have to unscrew those caddies to use in r640/r630 -- 40% success chance to unscrew, 60% you have to break those caddies off to unscrew)
one of tech's at work been helping me with them
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Not trying to call you out, but the manual still shows these are removable see here: Dell EMC PowerEdge R650 Installation and Service Manual | Dell Canada
All of our 15th gen Dell servers have come with drives that didn't have glue on the screws. I just pulled some to check. How long ago did you take delivery of these drives? Where they from Dell direct?
buying them from dell premiere sas ssd's, can't share link - but here are similar ones non-premiere. (we also did buy some from xbyte for unity xt storage deal)
https://www.serversupply.com/SSD W-TRAY/SAS-12GBPS/960GB/DELL/09JJC_346343.htm
https://www.serversupply.com/SSD W-TRAY/SAS-12GBPS/960GB/DELL/09JJC_346343.htm
Dell 800GB SSD up to SAS 24Gbps ISE Mix Use 512e 2.5in 3.5in Hybrid Carrier 3WPD | Dell USA
Increase the storage capacity of your Dell™ System with 800GB Solid State Drive from Dell. It boasts a storage capacity of up to 800GB, enabling users to store large amounts of data. This drive delivers enhanced data transfer speed of up to 24Gbps.
www.dell.com
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Checked our R450 and R750xd machines (all bought from Dell Germany via premier): None of the drives are glued. Neither the 2,5“ sas ssd in the R450 boxes nor the spinning rust in the R750.
I don't recall a U.3 drive having Gen5 support anyway, the ones with Gen 5 are all U.2 unless im mistaken that CD8P is a U.2 driveFor PCIe4 there's c-Payne's Gen4 collection SlimSAS gen4 - PCIe Host Adapters
I've personally used their redriver and it gives you 4 NVMe drives at x4 from a PCIe x16 slot, with 0.75m cables. Heck I've even used it on an ASUS Q87 motherboard and it actually works
I also picked up a refurb Broadcom switch - the P411W-32P - cheaply at ~ $400. That's one of the few things that can give you surprise removal and hot plug (only tested with a Supermicro X11 DPH-T). NVMe hot-plug is a hot mess and the switch seems better than others at it. If you use it, be sure to read the long forum post over at Level1Techs about it
Also tried to use HPE's 826689-B21 8x SFF drive cage - seemed like a good idea because these things go for $100 at times, have 4x SlimSAS 8i connectors - what's not to like. Except I've never gotten it to work despite powering it correctly and connecting to a variety of AICs, PCIe switches and redrivers. I don't know what magic crap HPE is doing with it's NVMe riser, but that cage doesnt work with normal SlimSAS 8i connections
As for ICYDock - there's some concept products they are harping on about like the CP104 which is a 8x U.2 cage in a 2 x 5.25" bay and uses MCIO (i.e claims to be ready for PCIe5 but no U.3 support) these if they become reality will retail for upwards of $500. ICY Dock also has other useless 9.5mm height drive cages (a lot of NVMe drives are now 15mm because of heatsink fins) and the average price is usually $400 ~ $500 for 4x bays of U.2 NVMe - that would mean $900 for just 8x bays
All in all, it seems buying a refurb Dell or Supermicro server with 16x or 24x NVMe bays is actually a better deal