SSD for PowerEdge T140

Question

I have a PowerEdge T140 which currently has an HDD installed. The HDD is a bottleneck and I would like to replace it with an SSD. The Dell support only presented one option (Dell 240GB SSD M.2 SATA 6Gbps Drive - BOSS) which has far to little storage for my purposes. My question is therefore; would an SSD be compatible with the PowerEdge T140, as long as it is of the M.2 form factor? Or is there something else one should also check before assuming compatibility? I notice for example that the M.2 SSD presented by Dell has a different pins setup than that of a competitor. Any guidance here would be appreciated.

Origin3k · Accepted Answer

To find out the Controller your T140 is equiped with just take a look windows device manager, OMSA or just visit dell.com/support and enter YOUR service tag(STAG) and on the middle right it will show how the server left the factory.

If you "only" have the software based controller it should be S140 or the hardware one which named Hxxx.

I have not checked if BOSS is supported for your T140(in 15 years as a dell partner i never touched a 1xx poweredge IIRC ). The BOSS exists as FullProfile and HalfProfile so check if you have a free PCIe Slot available and if its a LP or FP one. I expect that T140 only have FP.

Yes, the BOSS-S1 is supportet from every modern OS and we have running Windows Server, vSphere ESXi and also Linux from it.

If you buy one please aware that there are 2 SKUs needed. One for the PCIe Board and another one for the M.2 SSDs. If you wanna have a RAID 1 you need the SSD SKU two times.

Example:

1x 403-BCHD BOSS-S1 FP Customer Kit
2x 400-ASDQ M.2 240GB SSD Customer Kit

Regards,
Joerg

Origin3k · Answer

The M.2 for BOSS-S1/S2 is a standard SATA SSD within the M.2 formfactor and for Dell 13/14Gen servers its placed normaly on a PCI Card. The 15Gen use BOSS-S2 which is a hot swapable solution now and on the rear of a system and not "inside" any more.

M.2 is the formfactor.. .but there is B-Key and M-Key connector. The first one is for SATA SSDs and the second is NVMe. Today consumer stuff is NVMe but BOSS-S1/S2 is older and based on SATA. Most likely thats the difference that you see.

BOSS-N for 16Gen. is based on NVMe .

But as BOSS is a Boot optimized Storage Solution which its a simple boot device for Hypervisor like ESXi, Hyper-V and Linux. Its not a general mass storage hence this is why only see 240/480GB M.2 SSD sizes. Yes you can also install a full blown OS... but you will run out of space for Apps and Data and its RAID0 or RAID1.

Question: What kind of Controller is in your T140. I never deployed a T1xx for a customer or for us so iam not that familar with the low entry level system.

The technical docs say that T140 support SAS/SATA/NLSAS and SSDs. The best available controller is the H730P. Buying supportet (ssd) drives trough APOS isnt that easy.

Regards,
Joerg

Jiffy2471 · Answer

Thank you for the information Joerg.

As for the question, unless there is an integrated storage controller then I don't have one.

Given that, this is how I understand the situation: To use SSD with the PowerEdge T140 a BOSS-S1/S2 adapter card is required. On such a card, one or two M.2 SATA (i.e. not NVMe) SSD drives can be attached, from which the server then can boot. Is this correct?

PowerEdge HDD/SCSI/RAID

SSD for PowerEdge T140

Was this post helpful?