Add 2.5" U.2 (NVMe) SSDs to custom build?
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@scottalanmiller Ok....
Yeah I've seen that Supermicro HBA reviewed over at servethehome but it was such an old review I figured there would be more stuff out since then.
That Highpoint card is over $400 on Amazon!
Alright, I guess M.2 it is. Just need to figure out a two drive setup.
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The problem that you'll run into is that you don't have a physical backplane, because the entire chassis has to be built to handle U.2. So just having an HBA doesn't fix the fundamental issue of lacking the enterprise server chassis to make it all come together.
What you can do is just cable the drives directly to the HBA. This will work but doesn't allow for your hot swap.
This is where the Icy dock is useful. It provides a stable "one drive" backplane of a sort tha tyou can connect to with this cable.
https://highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series-ssd7120-overview.htm
https://www.amazon.com/High-Point-SSD7120-Dedicated-Controller/dp/B0774WLSH4
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@biggen said in Add 2.5" U.2 (NVMe) SSDs to custom build?:
That Highpoint card is over $400 on Amazon!
Yeah, there really isn't a market for cheap U.2 gear. Think of it like a Ferrari specific part. There's no call for a cheap version. Anyone who owns a Ferrari is going to pony up for genuine high performance parts. The number of Ferrari owners who need parts on the cheap is so few that there is no market to support them.
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@scottalanmiller Yeah but, Highpoint? Man, I'd have a hard time paying them anything!
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@scottalanmiller ICY DOCK sent me this .pdf that shows compatible HBA/RAID cards with that bay/tray and none of them are inexpensive.
Alright, back to M.2. Not worth spending this kind of money and not getting Enterprise level quality from end-to-end.
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@biggen said in Add 2.5" U.2 (NVMe) SSDs to custom build?:
I figured there would be more stuff out since then.
I've never seen a company adopting U.2. It's a very rare standard. Certainly out there, but even in the SSD space it remains pretty niche. I'm not sure if it is gaining adoption, or losing it, at this point. It's certainly a valid platform, and has important use cases, but it remains pretty uncommon. In the very large enterprise we see it, in the SMB it's pretty much non-existant.
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@biggen said in Add 2.5" U.2 (NVMe) SSDs to custom build?:
Alright, back to M.2. Not worth spending this kind of money and not getting Enterprise level quality from end-to-end.
Exactly, and that's what drives cheaper makers out of the market. There's no money to be made making cheaper components. The drives are uber expensive, and their benefits don't matter to the consumer, prosumer, or even SMB markets generally. So no one is buying super expensive drives, just to them be saddled with all the additional complexity of supporting them.
Chicken and egg. In this kind of market, there is both no chicken and no egg, so the cycle never kicks off to make it affordable.
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We've added U2 drives to servers that were not originally made for it, so I have a pretty good idea what you need.
U2 is physically a 2.5" drive. NVMe is physically a PCIe bus connection.
Those are the two things you need to consider - how to mount it and how to connect it.
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The difference between M2 and U2 is the physical format and thermal capability. The U2 is made to have efficient cooling as it is basically made like a heat sink.
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U2 drives are the same price as enterprise SAS drives but faster and better.
They are usually not more expensive than M.2 drives either, if you pick the same model drives.
For instance Intel P4511 is the read intensive enterprise M.2 drive and Intel P4510 is the U.2 drive and the price is the same. U2 drives comes in larger capacities though.
Enterprise M.2 drives are usually a little longer than their consumer counterparts (22x110mm instead of 22x80mm).
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A third option for NVMe drives is the HHHL format which is when the SSD is built directly on a PCIe card and you put it in a PCIe slot.
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Yeah I wanted U.2 simply because I like the "physical rectangular" drive and it can be slipped in and out of that ICY DOCK drive tray without having to break open the case to swap a drive out (although I can't imagine I'd be doing this ever). With M.2, you have to screw them in and they just feel "flimsy" to me. Again, this was a lab so I'm not too worried about reliability. Just wanted functionality.
There are also some speed differences if your're concerned with IOPS (as far as the Samsung Data Center drives are concerned) where the U.2 NVMe drives seem to be a bit faster than their M.2 NVMe counterparts.
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@biggen said in Add 2.5" U.2 (NVMe) SSDs to custom build?:
Yeah I wanted U.2 simply because I like the "physical rectangular" drive and it can be slipped in and out of that ICY DOCK drive tray without having to break open the case to swap a drive out (although I can't imagine I'd be doing this ever). With M.2, you have to screw them in and they just feel "flimsy" to me. Again, this was a lab so I'm not too worried about reliability. Just wanted functionality.
There are also some speed differences if your're concerned with IOPS (as far as the Samsung Data Center drives are concerned) where the U.2 NVMe drives seem to be a bit faster than their M.2 counterparts.
Yes U.2 are usually faster but the real difference is that they are faster with intensive workloads because the U.2 drives can stay cool while the M.2 drives get hot and have to slow down.
The question is what drives did you have in mind? While small capacity U.2 drives were made in the past, now they usually aren't available in smaller capacities than 1TB.
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@Pete-S
Well before @scottalanmiller ruined my life I was looking at twin MZ-QLB1T9NE.
But that was also before I had to figure spending another $600+ on bays/HBA/cables etc. I was figuring I could get a cheap HBA off Amazon.
I'll have close to $1500 in the system in just drives. Seems a bit silly for a lab of parts at this point.
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@biggen said in Add 2.5" U.2 (NVMe) SSDs to custom build?:
With M.2, you have to screw them in and they just feel "flimsy" to me. Again, this was a lab so I'm not too worried about reliability. Just wanted functionality.
They are quite solid. but that same Icy Dock unit takes M.2 drives as well.
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@biggen said in Add 2.5" U.2 (NVMe) SSDs to custom build?:
I'll have close to $1500 in the system in just drives. Seems a bit silly for a lab of parts at this point.
unless NVMe itself is something you are labbing... stick with spinners or really cheap SSDs in a lab.
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@scottalanmiller I saw that but I still have the problem of what do I plug the "backplane" into.
All I can find are $400+ adapters. -
So I'm looking at the motherboard I'm pillaging from another system and it has two M.2 slots built into it! Doh! When I bought it last year I must have had a premonition I wanted a dual NVMe setup for a future lab!
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@biggen said in Add 2.5" U.2 (NVMe) SSDs to custom build?:
So I'm looking at the motherboard I'm pillaging from another system and it has two M.2 slots built into it! Doh! When I bought it last year I must have had a premonition I wanted a dual NVMe setup for a future lab!
Scott is right. Putting U2 drives in your build is like Ferrari suspension on a Prius.
And that MB can't take enterprise M2 drives so you're better of with consumer drives.The IcyDoc you're looking at isn't really suitable for U.2 because you need server level cooling over the drives.
That said U.2 doesn't need a hot swap backplane because it's possible to cable them up similar to a SATA drive. Problem with that motherboard is that you need two available slots with x4 PCIe and that one doesn't have it. Or you can hook up two PCIe drives to one x8 or larger PCI slot - if you have bifurbication support on your PCIe slots and consumer motherboards usually don't have that.
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@Pete-S Yeah I think I'll skip U.2.
ICY DOCK makes this bay that you can put twin M.2 drives in. Then I could run double SFF-8643 cables back to two of these adapters that would plug into the twin M.2 slots on the MB.
All that really gets me is a lot of links and drive trays. Might as well plug the M.2 drives right into the MB and be done with it. I was hoping to buy an Enterprise M.2 drive, though, but those are all 110cm in length and the MB only supports M.2 to 80cm.
Always something...
