PowerEdge Hardware General

[TeslaBMWandtherest]

Hi,

I was hoping you could help with the following issue. I have a Dell R450 with a single processor and was hoping to use the Supermicro AOC-SLG3-2M2 (a dual NVME card) in PCIe Slot 1. This card works in other Dell R440 with a single processor server, so I was expecting it to also work in the R450, however during boot this card gives PCIe and PCIe timing errors. I tried the latest firmware's, bios and uefi boot, and all the nvme and bifurcation settings for each of them. To make sure it's not specifically the Supermicro card, I swapped the card for a random other non-brand PCIe 4.0 dual nvme card. This works only in bifurcation x4 mode exposing only 1 of the nvme drives.

Laurens

[DELL-Joey C]

Hi @TeslaBMWandtherest,

Dell R440 and R450 have a difference in the PCIe architecture, hence, the R440 might be able to support the card that you are mentioning. But without any proper information documentation, I'm unable to confirm R450 supports Supermicro AOC-SLG3-2M2. I've check PCIe slot priority, R450 has a PCIe integrated slot for Dell's own dual NVMe module card, which BOSS S1, referring to page 65 onwards: https://dl.dell.com/topicspdf/poweredge-r450_owners-manual_en-us.pdf

[TeslaBMWandtherest]

Hi Joey,

Thanks for the reply / helping hand. The R440 documentation is more clear / specific about the bifurcation modes, the R450 documentation doesn't specifically mention what is supported. As far as I can gather both the Intel and Samsung PCIe SSD AIC is that they have x4 interfaces. I believe all of the other components mentioned in the documentation are also x4 interfaces. This would give the impression that the firmware of the R450 is broken / buggy / doesn't support anything better / higher then x4 for bifurcation. This would be a shame and slightly misleading from Dell selling me a PCIe 4.0 server which suggests it support bifurcation but in practice doesn't. Is there any way you or Dell can help?

[DELL-Joey C]

Hi @TeslaBMWandtherest,

Unfortunately it is out of my capability from social community to help out. R450 is fairly new, hopefully it's still under warranty contract? If it does, I may suggest to call into support to try to obtain engineer feedback if they are able to confirm the issue is towards firmware bug. 

[TeslaBMWandtherest]

Hi Joey,

Thanks for the advice, however I have been down that road before and wont waste any time on it. The issue is not complex, and I believe it is there on purpose. 

Just for everyone to know.

As a work around I have replaced my pcie bifurcation card with a pci switch(ed) card which is not depended upon Dells vendor hardware lock in or buggy firmware. For example, the StarTech.com Dual M.2 PCIe SSD Adapter Card, x8 / x16 is a switched card supporting dual NVMe. These are slightly more expensive, approximately 3 times in comparison to a bifurcation card. There are also others out there supporting 4 NVMe drives but these are approximately 6 times more expensive than the bifurcation cards.

All in all, I'm not impressed with Dells performance on the current range of servers, the hardware they support and dubious documentation.

Dell be clear upfront to your customers, don't buy our servers if you want to use any industry standard hardware i.e. any IBM pc compatible hardware is not supported by Dell. We sell servers which don't adhere to the industry norm. We make our own norms and thus our servers are not IBM pc compatible. Please place this warning in the Dell shop so that any fool like me understands what I am buying. How stupid of me to have bought these servers.