NVME Hardware RAID on Proliant DL360G10

[xwebnetwork]

Hey everyone,

I am looking for the best way to achieve a hardware RAID 10 using NVMEs. From what I have gather, hardware NVME Raid is not natively supported for Gen 10 servers via any addon HPE hardware and while I could do a software RAID,  I am trying to install vSPhere on this particular machine, so hardware RAID is a must to use the drives as a single datastore. 

That being said, has anyone every installed something like a MegaRAID 9670-24i into a G10 server, connecting the NVME backplane to achieve this?

Or has anyone successfully configured a HW RAID using NVMEs? And if so, via what methods?

Thanks in advance for any insight and assistance!

EDIT: And if anyone thinks going the HW route is ludicrous and that there is a far better way to do this, I am all ears.

[kspringpm]

VSAN would be the better way to do this

[ksram]

Hi,

Thank you for the Post.

SSD NVMe architechture is not designed for hardware RAID. SSD NVMe are installed on PCIe cards and not controlled by Storage controller, that is why SSD NVMe is not supported on Hardware RAID. These drives are designed for very high performance. You will have to use Software RAID.

Thank you

RamKS

[xwebnetwork]

@ksram 

Understood to both. I guess my only dilemma is that the VSAN recommendation is 3 servers for the cluster which would require me to rebuild the entire infrastucture. I suppose if that's the tradeoff, then so be it. Will see how it plays out! Thanks!

[Arman1990]

Hardware RAID on DL380 Gen10 is supported via specially made boot devices like this

HP Enterprise/NS204i-p x2 Lanes NVMe PCIe3 x8 OS Boot
Device with 2x 480GB NVMe m.2 SSD (RAID 1)

My DL380 Gen10 uses one to run its Host OS - Microsoft Windows Server 2019

Bandwidth is 16Gbps

[MMelo]

@ksram 

Hello Ksram, when you said "SSD NVMe is not supported on Hardware RAID" is there any official document from HPE that you can share? We have the Tri-mode adapter for Gen10 Plus, is there any workaround to use HW RAID on Gen10 for NVMe?

Thanks,

mmelo

[ksram]

Hi @MMelo 

Thank you for the Post.

Could you please share the details of the Array Controller and the Drive details (Form Factor and or Model number) to check further.

Thank you
RamKS

[MMelo]

Hi @ksram 

We are proposing two disks P50225-B21 (HPE 1.6TB NVMe Gen4 High Performance Mixed Use SFF SCN U.3 PM1735a SSD) with 874633-B21 (HPE DL560 Gen10 4-port NVMe Mezzanine Card) to be used in a DL560 Gen10. In this scenario we are allowed to configure Software RAID only, a customer would like to use Hardware RAID.

Thanks for your attention.

mmelo

[ksram]

Hi @MMelo,

Thank you. But could you please share the Controller details from which we can check whether any new updates regardingthe Hardware RAID. As far as we see, the NVME Drive would be related to PCI and that will support only Software RAID.

If you share the Controller details we can check further. Also it is best to oconsult  the Consultation team for best posssible solutions and suggestions.

Thank you
RamKS