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Upgrading a HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Server with HPE NVMe drives

 
Richard85
Occasional Advisor

Upgrading a HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Server with HPE NVMe drives

Hello, we're looking for a HPE person to help us out with our question. Alternatively, if somebody here has experience and could point us in the correct direction, then that would also be helpful.

Thanks!
Richard

The question and backstory

We purchased a HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 SMB Server, which is rack mountable,  2U in size and has two Xeon Gold 6230 / 2.1 GHz processors. The Model number is: P02466-B21. We did this in the hope that it would be upgradeable with HP's modular system and we'd have a fair amount of support if we stuck with HPE hardware and their components. We're not a big company and the servers are very important to us, so we wanted to stick with a single provider.

However, we've been instructed by consultants to get HPE NVMe drives, although our technicians have found these are not compatible with our chassis. Is there a way to augment/upgrade our chassis, so we can get these drives in use? Or are the technicians correct that some chassis are not compatible and cannot be upgraded?

It's important to our business that we can upgrade the IO speeds and stay competitive for our customers.

Thanks very much for your help.

15 REPLIES 15
Suman_1978
HPE Pro

Re: Upgrading a HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Server with HPE NVMe drives

Hi,

Its always recommended to refer to QuickSpecs for compatibility of products.

HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Server QuickSpecs
https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getpdf.aspx/a00008180enw.pdf

SERVER MEMORY AND PERSISTENT MEMORY POPULATION RULES FOR HPE GEN10 SERVERS WITH INTEL XEON SCALABLE PROCESSORS
https://psnow.ext.hpe.com/doc/a00017079enw?jumpid=in_lit-psnow-red

Thank You!
https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/home


I work for HPE.
[Any personal opinions expressed are mine, and not official statements on behalf of Hewlett Packard Enterprise]

Accept or Kudo

Richard85
Occasional Advisor

Re: Upgrading a HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Server with HPE NVMe drives

Hi,

We're looking for advice from somebody who has done this or an authority that knows how to.

We already have looked at the specs. From a simple reading you can see that NVMe drives are there, although are technicians are saying they aren't with our specific chassis. From my understanding we can upgrade the chassis with components? 

If so, then which ones would these be? This is the kind of help that we need.

Thanks,

Cali
Honored Contributor

Re: Upgrading a HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Server with HPE NVMe drives

Hi,

these NVMe Drive should work:

P26934-B21 HPE 1.6TB NVMe Gen4 x8 High Performance Mixed Use AIC HHHL PM1735 SSD

This is a PCIe Card, you can not Boot from this NVMe, but it gives you the requested IO Speed.

Cali

 

ACP IT Solutions AGI'm not an HPE employee, so I can be wrong.
Richard85
Occasional Advisor

Re: Upgrading a HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Server with HPE NVMe drives

Thanks Cali. Unfortunately we already purchased 4 drives and our techs could not get the bios to recognise them.

HPE Read Intensive - Solid State Drive - 960 GB - hot-swap - 2.5" SFF - PCI Express x4
(NVMe) - med HPE Smart Carrier NVMe
P13676-B21

There were a lot of shortages at the time (and there probably still are now), so these were the only HPE NVMe drives that we could get our hands on. Our techs said we purchased the base chasis that was not compatible with NVMe drives.

However, this suprised me, since isn't it possible to purchase "boxes", which allow you to customise the chasis for different components? (such as different drive arrays or the dvd r/w drive).

hunter86_bg
Frequent Advisor

Re: Upgrading a HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Server with HPE NVMe drives

So, your system didn't recognize them.
How did you verify that ? Did you use the HPSSA to crosh-check if the devices are visible?

Also, are they detectable by the OS ?

Usually, HP/HPE use firmware to detect the hardware and identify potential component failures. Yet, most on the market components should work even if not supported officially.
Richard85
Occasional Advisor

Re: Upgrading a HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Server with HPE NVMe drives

Yes they can confirm that we've followed those steps. The drives are not available in the OS nor the BIOS. This server seems to have different backplanes that support different types of drive configurations. It seems you need to change the backplane on it. Hence, we were thinking that could purchase a different box or something to upgrade the chassis?

Any thoughts on that?

Cali
Honored Contributor

Re: Upgrading a HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Server with HPE NVMe drives

As I wrote to you, the NVMe drive I mentioned is not a "normal" drive, it is a PCI card.
Therefore it doesn't matter which backplane is used.

Cali

ACP IT Solutions AGI'm not an HPE employee, so I can be wrong.
hunter86_bg
Frequent Advisor

Re: Upgrading a HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Server with HPE NVMe drives

Hi Cali,

based on https://buy.hpe.com/us/en/options/drives-storage/server-solid-state-drives/hpe-nvme-mainstream-performance-read-intensive-solid-state-drives/hpe-960gb-nvme-gen3-mainstream-performance-read-intensive-sff-scn-u-2-pe6011-ssd/p/P13676-B21 the drive seems to be Small Form Factor .
Does this mean that the HW Raid Controller needs to support it , in order to detect the drive ?
Cali
Honored Contributor

Re: Upgrading a HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Server with HPE NVMe drives

Sorry, you are right.

I copy the wrong one, look for this:

HPE 750GB NVMe Gen3 x4 High Performance Low Latency Write Intensive AIC HHHL P4800X SSD

878038-B21

https://buy.hpe.com/us/en/options/drives-storage/server-solid-state-drives/hpe-nvme-high-performance-low-latency-write-intensive-solid-state-drives/hpe-750gb-nvme-gen3-x4-high-performance-low-latency-write-intensive-aic-hhhl-p4800x-ssd/p/878038-B21

Maybe you can get a cheap Rebuild.

ACP IT Solutions AGI'm not an HPE employee, so I can be wrong.