Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

1U E3-1200 server with dual m.2 slot

gleertgleert Member, Host Rep

What is a good hardware setup for a 1U E3-1200 server with dual m.2 slot in Raid 1?

Comments

  • WilliamWilliam Veteran
    edited July 2017

    E3 what generation...?

    M.2 PCIe also does not do any RAID unless you have Intel RST on a brand new board. M.2 SATA RAID is rare onboard.

  • ClouviderClouvider Patron Provider, Veteran

    That depends on your budget, but this would be a question for your system integrator or distributor.

    As William said, this would need to be a brand new board.

  • gleertgleert Member, Host Rep

    William said: E3 what generation...?

    v5 or v6

  • trewqtrewq Administrator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    You can get PCI adapters that would fit a 1U if you don't use a bracket.

  • bsdguybsdguy Member

    @William said:
    E3 what generation...?

    M.2 PCIe also does not do any RAID unless you have Intel RST on a brand new board. M.2 SATA RAID is rare onboard.

    No problem. Raid 0 an 1 can be done almost for free (~ insignificant proc. load) in software. Hardware raid nowadays makes sense only above/beyond raid 0 and 1 (i.e. raid 5[0] or 6[0]).

    It might be useful, though, for OP to specify his question somewhat more.

  • WilliamWilliam Veteran

    Sure (and i would not use HW RAID1/0 anymore either, for anything), but i doubt he would have requested specifically RAID1 then as it is clear SW RAID works on any disks attached.

  • WilliamWilliam Veteran

    trewq said: You can get PCI adapters that would fit a 1U if you don't use a bracket.

    Viable solution indeed - I have this one; it uses a Marvell PCIe 2.0 x2 (so ~10Gbit/s, thus only a RAID1 makes sense to get full SSD speed) chip and has 2 M.2 B+M key slots and 2 SATA connectors.

    Costs somewhere around 60EUR w/o VAT on Amazon from a French company, Kalea Informatique (ships by Prime via Amazon in EU)

  • vmhausvmhaus Member, Top Host, Host Rep
    edited July 2017

    Any providers offering dedi out of Supermicro MicroClouds E3 v5/6 should be able to do it. Convert both M.2 NVMe to U.2 2.5" and do SoftRAID 1.

    https://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/NVMe.cfm?show=SELECT&type=2#count

    There is also a M.2 to PCIe Card adapter by SuperMicro that takes 2x M.2 NVMe drives.

    http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SLG3-2M2.cfm

  • vmhausvmhaus Member, Top Host, Host Rep

    @William said:

    trewq said: You can get PCI adapters that would fit a 1U if you don't use a bracket.

    Viable solution indeed - I have this one; it uses a Marvell PCIe 2.0 x2 (so ~10Gbit/s, thus only a RAID1 makes sense to get full SSD speed) chip and has 2 M.2 B+M key slots and 2 SATA connectors.

    Costs somewhere around 60EUR w/o VAT on Amazon from a French company, Kalea Informatique (ships by Prime via Amazon in EU)

    @William, just curious, does the Marvell card support M.2 NVMe Drives or normal M.2 SSD drives?

  • WilliamWilliam Veteran

    vmhaus said: just curious, does the Marvell card support M.2 NVMe Drives

    It cannot support NVMe - NVMe (and PCIe AHCI) SSDs are M-Key (PCIe x4), not B-M-Key (SATA). Consequently the Marvell chip only does SATA.

    Splitting PCIe lanes - either from x4 slot to multi x4 shared or from x8/x16 to multi x4 dedicated - requires a PCIe switch (eg. PLX) which comes at a high price.

    Amfeltec produces cards for this:

    http://amfeltec.com/squid-pci-express-carrier-boards-for-m-2-ssd-modules/?view=list

    They start - without SSDs - at ~350$.

Sign In or Register to comment.