Upgrading a HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Server with HPE NVMe drives

[Richard85]

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.

[Suman_1978]

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

[Richard85]

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]

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

[Richard85]

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]

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]

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]

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

[hunter86_bg]

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]

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.

[Richard85]

We can't afford to create an array with these cards. What's the problem with the drives that we've purchased?

The other commenter mentioned that perhaps it could be the raid controller.

[hunter86_bg]

Usually if you got latest firmware of the system and it won't detect the disks - either the controller (as these are SFF NVMEs) doesn't support them or the disks are Dead on Arrival (very low chance to happen).

I think it's more reasonable to talk with the Sales people and ask them if there is an option to swap the current NVMEs with NVMEs suitable for your systems.

Edit: What controller are you using ?

[Cali]

Even if the NVMe Drive looks like an SSD Drive, it is connected differently.

The NVMe is a PCIe bus device, the Drives connect by an NVMe Riser Card.

In Gen10 Server the NVMe Drive is connected directly to the PCIe bus, the Controller is unable to see because it did not pass the controller.

There is no possibility to build a Raid with the Raid Controller.

Tri-Mode Raid Kontroller, which supports NVMe, SSD, SAS are new and come with Gen10+ Server.

Look at HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Server User Guide Page 99.

[hunter86_bg]

So, in such case the thread owner needs Tri-Mode Raid Kontroller (if it's possible to work on Gen10) or to use as standalone disks (is that possible at all ?) and aggregate them in the OS via software-based raid.

[Richard85]

Hi, since we already have a number of NVMe drives, we're going to try to get them recognised by purchasing adapters to the pci interface. We would like to go with a HPE solution/parts but perhaps that's not possible. Our system is a Gen 10 and not a Gen 10 plus.

Our purchased drives are for a raid (which from my understanding of the comments would need to be a software raid) and we can't afford to purchase several other NVMe drives for $7000 each in the hope they will work. We're an SME, so we don't have a lot of capital to throw around. We will try to make do with what we have.

I'll let you guys know if the adapters make the software raid possible

[ledvan]

hi, any luck with this?