Great ! PCIe 4.0 x8 HHHL 1.6T SSD cards - works perfectly in DL380p Gen8 under WS2016 !!!

[CharlieK_EU]

Hi everybody. I have to share with you my great discovery !

I have Proliant DL380p Gen8 2-Processor with Windows Server 2016 Standard installed. I had to speed up my P420 1GB FBWC disk subsystem (4x HDD 10K Rpm) because of databases used in virtual machines. There is IOPS huge problem. So I looked for any solution. And tested some idea.... 

And the winner is....

2x Samsung PCIe PM1735 1.6TB HHHL SSD cards (Samsung PN: MZPLJ1T6HBJR-00007  but there is also HP PN: P26934-K21 HPE 1.6TB NVMe Gen4 x8 High Performance Mixed Use AIC HHHL PM1735 SSD which seems to be identical) !!!

And it works like a charm ! 

I just put it inside started server and it was recognized with Microsoft drivers automatically. 

The only problem is I installed 1st drive into the lowest standard PCIe socket so it is recognized as PCI 2.0 x4 lanes drive (it was because it is x8 wide socket but I just checked ducomentation standard riser is x8 wide, but PCie 2.0 for compatibility issues installed    ). The the upper one HHHL card - is recognized as regular PCI 3.0 x8 lanes drive, so I think that when I will move that lowest drive into highest position (equiped with x16 PCI express socket) it will be also x8 PCI 3.0 .

For your convenience - the most resonable idea is earlier to swap standard riser into HPE option riser:

653206-B21    HP DL380p/560 Gen8 3 Slot PCI-E Riser Kit (x16, x8, x8) => but it only works when you have 2 processors inside !

Than all your 2x HHHL cards will be recognized as PCIe 3.0 x lanes  

Of course this is not possible to make thise drives as start drives. And they are also not operated with HPE Smart Storage Administrator. BUT there are 2 solutions. 

1 option:

You install RAID-1 boot drives in SFF bays and there install OS or only any boot-loader targeting PCIe drives.

2. My solution: 

OS is starting from P420 raid controller (in the future I will add 2x small SAS SSDs as OS only configured in RAID-1). Than 2x HHHL card added to storage spaces under Windows 2016. And I configured them as mirror volume. So when one card will fail - I will still not loose my data  

[CharlieK_EU]

BTW, I am wondering how to easly move that lowest drive to highest position (as previously desribed).

Do you maybe know what will happen in Windows storage spaces than ? Will still be remembering ID of that drive and working properly or it mark volume as broken / failed ?  Do you have such experience ?

[ksram]

Hi @CharlieK_EU,

Good day!

Thank you for the Post

And hen moving the Drive since these are PCI based I am afraid this may lead to loose Data as we are moving the slots.

Best would be to take complete back up and then try to avoid any issues.

Thank you
RamKS