Mark Simpkins reveals HPE’s “hidden treasure”—a way to install your hypervisor and OS to an HPE ProLiant server without using USB, SD cards, or bay-installed drives.
An engineer might suggest “to separate your data plane from your OS plane.” That’s a less than clear way to say many system administrators prefer to install their hypervisor and operating system on a low-capacity boot device which does not consume a drive bay, thus dedicating all space on the bay drives to data storage and maximizing capacity.
I consider that a best practice, myself. One way that has been popular is to install the hypervisor either to an internal USB drive or SD card. It’s a really inexpensive option, right?
But this approach carries significant risk outside a hobbyist or home lab environment, and falls under the “penny wise, pound foolish” category for production servers.
It works until it doesn’t
There are several downsides to that approach. Those flash-based “drives” tend not to be as robust as a “proper” SAS, SATA, or NVMe drives. After all, many of those were designed for other purposes such as consumer storage, cameras, and drones.
Data corruption over even a short time is common, and one may not have a simple way to mirror such an installation to help mitigate that risk. In fact, a major hypervisor player VMware has recently advised that “starting from the next major vSphere release, SD cards/USB media as a standalone boot device will not be supported.” Since VMware is such a big part of the hypervisor market, this really will push the need for a better solution.
HPE’s hidden treasure
I’m calling this a hidden treasure since I didn’t know about it, nor apparently did some of our customers and at least one distributor. That falls on marketing, which is why I wrote this blog.
A customer recently asked in an online forum how other people are installing their hypervisor and OS to an HPE ProLiant ML350 Gen10 without using USB, SD cards, or bay-installed drives.
There were lots of suggestions, but no one knew there was an option from HPE—including me! I thought to myself there’s no way we overlooked such an obvious customer requirement. I contacted no fewer than four HPE product managers and their director asking for a solution. I got an immediate reply that we do have such a device: the HPE NS204i-p x2 Lanes NVMe PCIe3 x8 OS Boot Device. That’s more of a full product description than a name, but it does the job and meets the needs quite well.
Specifications and form factors
The HPE NS204i-p NVMe OS Boot Device is a self-contained boot solution in a simple, pre-configured PCIe card that requires no GUI or user setup. This plug-and-play OS boot device includes two 480 GB M.2 SSDs, enabling customers to mirror OS through hardware RAID 1. Based on NVMe technology, the HPE NS204i-p NVMe OS Boot Device delivers up to 4x faster read capability than legacy SATA boot solutions.
The HPE NS204i OS Boot Device comes in different form factors and is a dedicated hardware RAID 1 solution for those that wish to separate their data plane from their OS plane. The NS204i meets the certification requirements of VMware and Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct. (Please see the server compatibility matrix below for each of the different form factors.)
Server platforms support a single NS204i OS Boot Device. This RAID-optimized SSD flash-based solution utilizes the Windows, Linux, or VMware NVMe inbox drivers for easy set up and reliability.
The NS204i OS Boot Device does not consume any drive bay, thus making all of the bays available for data storage. The HPE NS204i-p and the NS204i-d OS Boot Devices includes two 480GB M.2 NVMe SSDs. Two 22110 M.2 NVMe SSDs must be added to the NS204i-r riser and the NS204i-t Boot Controller. The NS204i boot device enables customers to mirror their OS through dedicated RAID 1.
HPE NS204i presents itself to your management interface as a single, directly connected NVMe drive, not a RAID controller. As the NS204i is a hardware OS boot device, only RAID 1 mode is supported, and it will not operate in any other RAID mode. HPE NS204i is “plug-and-play” with no need to configure or manage the device. Always ensure you are running the latest iLO version and update server BIOS, FW, and drivers when they become available.
If this sounds like something you need for your HPE ProLiant server, check the support matrix above, and then visit the HPE Store or contact your partner.
Mark Simpkins
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
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Mark is the marketing manager for the Small and Midsized Segment here at HPE. He blogs on topics of interest that can help our SMB servers and solutions customers and partners.
