TS140 + NVMe (PCIe adapter) + FN11 - Will it work?

[ChrisNAS]

Hello,

I've picked up a TS140 and I'd like to use the fastest possible storage for bhyeve/jails. I know I can use a standard SSD on SATA, but I'm trying to find out if I can use:

Samsung 960 EVO Series - PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD
with a
Mailiya M.2 PCIe to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter

I've been searching but haven't found clear answers for this particular mix of hardware+os. Hoping someone might know for sure.

1) Will the SSD be usable in FN11 using that adapter?
2) Anyone know if this will work in TS140?

Also, I already have drives for general storage and will pickup a small SATA SSD for boot. So the above doesn't need boot capabilities, just be usable as a storage drive for VMs.

 

[Dice]

1. Shouldn't be any problems.
2. Does the TS140 feature PCIe 3.0? (if yes, you are probably fine)
3. Do you have at least 8GB of RAM? (minimum requirement)

 

[ChrisNAS]

Hi, Thanks for the reply.

Of the 4 slots, says: Slot 1: PCIe 3.0 x16, full height, half length

So apparently that adapter won't work being a x4.

Edit: Didn't know you can install a x4 card into an x16 slot.

 

[mav@]

Didn't know you can install a x4 card into an x16 slot.

You can install any PCIe card into any PCIe slot, while it physically fit there. But of course it will work as minimum of card and slot.

 

[Stux]

If it fits, it should work. Might not boot, but that'd be a waste under FreeNAS anyway.

All the adapters I know half height half length anyway. Just put it in a x4 or more to get full dpeed

 

[RegularJoe]

I have the Lenovo TS440 with the same motherboard and with TrueOS the device does work. I purchased an Adata 128 gig unit on sale for $80 and it shows 1,000-800 meg a second with diskinfo. I get 1,000 meg a second disk read and 300 meg a second disk write under Linux.

And Windows 7 in a PCIe 2.0 slot on my HP Z800 workstation 600 meg a second disk read and 520 meg a second disk write with an old tool called NBench. There are some oddities with NVME and I just wanted to see about booting. According to Adata I should see 2500/1100 but that so far has not been the case. In FreeBSD I grep dmesg and I see that there is some barking about throttling for thermal reasons. The Samsung 950 Pro I tested 24 months ago or so was dead on with NBench on Windows 7 with the published speed. So I guess you get what you pay for. My next purchase would be Samsung 960 Pros in the Dell quad card that uses all 16 lanes.

 

[RegularJoe]

actually my low end 128gb unit only does 1000/550 the Samsung 960 Pro 512gb would be 3500/2100

 

[lenovo_fanboy]

tried 2 PCIe cards (Asus mini, Akasa) on 2 of my TS140.
doesn't work (latest BIOS FBKTD0AUS 06/12/2018 or older ones) - linux sees and installs on it, but the bloody BIOS does not put it on it's boot list.

Implementing NVMe Drives on Lenovo Servers - Lenovo Press
https://lenovopress.com/lp0508.pdf

 

[RegularJoe]

BIOS bootable will not work, it might work in Pure EFI mode as a boot device.