NVMe drive support for SuperMicro X10SLM+-F

[nickt]

I've decided the time has come to add an SSD pool for my VMs - my six disk RAIDZ2 rust array doesn't suit well the workload generated by my VMs. I am thinking of a dual SSD mirror. My board (a Supermicro X10SLM+-F) doesn't have on-board NVMe support and I've used up the on-board SATA ports. So I'm thinking a pair of NVMe to PCI-E adapters, installed in the two PCI-E 3.0 slots (the board has three slots, two are PCI-E 3.0 x8). Specifically:

• 2x Orico PSM2 M.2 NVMe to PCI-E 3.0 x4 expansion card (link)
• 2x Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500 GB M2 NVMe SSDs (link)

A couple of questions for the forum, please:

• Given that my board predates NVMe, will this approach work? Will the SSDs show up and perform well on my board? (I don't need boot support for the SSDs)
• Any experience with either product worth sharing? The Samsung EVOs seem popular and performant

Note that this is a home server; I am not looking for enterprise grade here. Also note that I am based in Australia, meaning that my buying options are somewhat limited...

Many thanks,

Nick

 

[nickt]

One further question: as an alternative to the Samsung 970 EVO Plus, does anyone have any experience with the Seagate FireCuda 510 (link)?

Ordinarily, a device called "FireCuda" that is marketed at gamers would send me running... but 650TBW (compared to Samsung's 300TBW) is hard to ignore.

Thanks

 

[HoneyBadger]

Check your board's BIOS for settings related to "PCIe bifurcation" - if they exist, you may be able to use an adaptor card that has 2 NVMe M.2 slots in a single slot, which would let you keep the others free (in case you wanted to expand or use it for other purposes later)

I don't forsee any issues using an NVMe device for non-bootable storage on that board. I've used them on older hardware without issue.

For your choice of drive either of them is likely fine; the increased TBW on the Seagate is tempting but it does seem to come at an added cost of roughly AUD$50 per drive based on your site. Personally I'd consider the Samsungs first unless you know you're going to be putting a lot of write workloads on them.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

If your mainboard supports bifurcation, I would go with the official Supermicro product for the adapter card. See below in my "Home NAS" HW description for the part number.

 

[nickt]

Thanks @HoneyBadger and Patrick - that's great help.

PCI-E bifurcation sounds like a great option, but the challenge is a complete lack of affordable options for SuperMicro suppliers in Australia. Options here are either through data-centre focused system integrators or dodgy overseas imports, both of which end up very expensive. A little frustrating...

I'm thinking it's a pair of Samsungs in a pair of Orico cards. I've got 3 PCI-E slots - I'm not using any of them yet, so it's not too bad.

 

[pschatz100]

I have an even older Supermicro X9-SCM board, and it runs a NVMe SSD in a pci card just fine. As long as the OS can load drivers for the card, you will be OK. Of course, it won't boot - but you knew that already.

 

[rushrush]

I have an even older Supermicro X9-SCM board, and it runs a NVMe SSD in a pci card just fine. As long as the OS can load drivers for the card, you will be OK. Of course, it won't boot - but you knew that already.

Actually it's possible to even boot from an NVME SSD for both X9-SCM and X10SLM+-F.

Mod Supermicro Motherboard BIOS to Support NVME - Next Spaceship

Sometimes when we think something is too hard to begin, the only reason is that we don’t understand it. With a little determination, we can archive …

leons.im

 

[Ericloewe]

Figures someone would have tried that, sooner or later. UEFI is supposed to make this sort of thing a breeze.

That said, I'd probably sooner replace the system firmware with coreboot, since there's some buzz around a number of Supermicro models being supported. AMI is so buggy that one might as well go all the way, if flashing non-OEM firmware is an acceptable risk.

The no-mod option is to use rEFInd from a supported boot device (probably USB) to load an NVMe driver for UEFI and run bootx64.efi on the NVMe disk.