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DL385 Gen10 Plus and Universal SATA M.2 SSD Enablement Kit PCI card (878783-B21))

 
Ed Bass at Born Capital
Occasional Advisor

DL385 Gen10 Plus and Universal SATA M.2 SSD Enablement Kit PCI card (878783-B21))

Does anyone have experience installing this PCI card that allows connection of two M.2 SSD sticks to SATA ports (part number 878783-B21) in a DL385 Gen10 Plus server?  I haven't been able to find specific documentation for proper installation of that kit in a DL385 Gen10 Plus.  We've ordered that kit plus two HP M.2 240GB SSD sticks that are documented as meant to work with the card.  A couple of questions have been nagging me and keeping me awake at night, since installation of the kit is scheduled for this Friday by remote hands in our data center.  I'm far from an HP server hardware expert, so some of my terminology may be off the mark.  I haven't been able to find any resources specific to this server and the enablement kit.

Presumably the two SATA cables from the card should plug into the onboard SATA ports on the system board?  From what I've been able to tell from DL385 Gen10 Plus server docs, there are two onboard SATA ports on the system board?  (I think there is a 3rd SATA port for optical drives only?).  Any guidance on the location of those ports on the system board would be helpful.

The server has an unused P408i Smart Array controller, but I've read that it will not recognize the M.2 drives.  Is that correct?

Under the assumption that the Smart Array card can't use the drives, if we connect to the two onboard SATA ports, we should see the drives from BIOS?  If we enable RAID on the S100i RAID controller, will we be able to set up a software RAID array from BIOS, or will we need to do that at the operating system level?  Any assistance or insights is greatly appreciated.

5 REPLIES 5
support_s
System Recommended

Query: DL385 Gen10 Plus and Universal SATA M.2 SSD Enablement Kit PCI card (878783-B21))

Ed Bass at Born Capital
Occasional Advisor

Re: Query: DL385 Gen10 Plus and Universal SATA M.2 SSD Enablement Kit PCI card (878783-B21

Yes, understood that both M.2 drives must be in the HP line and of the exact same time.  We have that covered, using two of the 240GB M.2 SSD sticks.

DL325 Gen10 Plus details are not applicable to our DL385 Gen10 Plus.

support_s
System Recommended

Re: DL385 Gen10 Plus and Universal SATA M.2 SSD Enablement Kit PCI card (878783-B21))


Hi,

Please refer below server Quick specs:-
https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a00073549enw?jumpid=in_lit-psnow-red 

 

HPE Universal SATA 6G AIC HHHL M.2 SSD Enablement Kit 878783-B21 Notes:  


− SATA M.2 cannot be supported in LFF/SFF chassis with mid tray configuration due to thermal concern − In 24SFF/12LFF/8LFF chassis, slot 1 /4 /5 can support it under ambient temperature of 30C
− This kit requires a PCIe slot and supports up to two M.2 SSDs which should be the same SSD SKUs 
− SR100i cannot be selected with 878783-B21 Universal SATA HH M.2 Kit or P12965-B21 HPE NS204i-p Gen10+ NVMe Boot Device. 


Accept or Kudo

Ed Bass at Born Capital
Occasional Advisor

Re: DL385 Gen10 Plus and Universal SATA M.2 SSD Enablement Kit PCI card (878783-B21))

Well, we tried installing this to a big huge fail.  The card comes with cable P22821-001.  One end connects to the two ports on the card (mini SAS?) and the other end contains two plugs:  one that fits the DL385 G10+ system board Optical/SATA port and one that only seems to fit the NVMe ports on the system board.  For the NVMe port, we chose the port marked as 8a near the SmartArray daughterboard labeled "PCIE / OCP".  We tried with both ends plugged into the system board ports and with one at a time plugged into one of the system board ports.  No luck at all seeing the NVMe sticks as drives.

We do see the card in the Device Inventory.  We tried setting the NVMe Express port in BIOS to "RAID" and "NVMe" with no change (I don't even know what that setting controls, honestly - it's not documented that I can find).  We're at a complete loss as to next steps.  We'll likely call HPE support to see what progress that might provide.

I wish we'd just done what we're considering now as the second option.  Since this is an 8LFF CTO server, we're probably just going to get two compatible LFF HDDs and build a RAID 1 array using the SmartArray P408-i controller.

The server does have two PCI-based workload-oriented PCIe Gen4 SSDs - HPE 1.6TB NVMe Gen4 High Performance Mixed Use SFF BC U.3 PM1735 SSD P26934-B21.  Total grasping at straws, but I wonder if those are interferring with what we're attempting to do. 

mikevienna123
Established Member

Re: DL385 Gen10 Plus and Universal SATA M.2 SSD Enablement Kit PCI card (878783-B21))

Hi,
When you are talking about the "SATA" SSD enablement card then the NVMe's will never work.

You can of course install two M.2 SATA SSDs but not NVMe types.

Kind regards
Christopher