Dell R7425 and Samsung 970 EVO NVMe drives

Hello,

this is a strange behaviour, did you check if the PERC firmware is up to date?

Thanks
Marco

DivTS,

I believe the underlying issue is based on compatibility, this is due to the drives not appearing to be listed as supported. I won't be due to it being an m.2 or a u.2, as the R7425 has both types listed as supported.

Let me know if this helps.

@DELL-Chris H can you please point me into the direction (documentation) of supported NVME drives as of today?

Hi,

You probably can refer to this 2.5 NVMe drive user guide: https://dell.to/2BnShbY

Do let me know if you have any other questions.

DivTS,

You can find ones that are offered from Dell here. If you let me know if you have a size and form factor preference, I can also provide part numbers. 

If you are wanting a list of every supported drives for the server, we don't have access to one.

That only gives me supported operating systems and other NVME specific information. I guess there is no official list that is being managed for supported / certified NVME drives?

Thanks.

Hello DivTS,

For M.2 drives we only have validated:
Part# 400-ASDQ , 240G M.2 Drive for BOSS, Customer Install
Part# 400-AVSS , 480GB, SATA, M.2 solid state drive, CUS

The link Chris posted also lists available NVMe
https://dell.to/2RxElQM

I hope this helps.

Hi, I wanted to follow up on this to see if any additional documentation is available regarding the adapters Dell approves (if any) officially. For example, I am using an M.2 to 2.5 inch adapter that may be causing these issues. Are there any adapters that are officially supported by Dell for NVME drives?

Thanks.

Question; are the NVME drive bays backwards compatible with M.2/SATA interfaces (the ones that do not signify SAS/NVME). 

Hello, in my opinion, If the M.2 connector of a Dell system supports NVME, it will generally be backward compatible with M.2 SATA drives. However, I am still not sure because I could not find a technical white paper for this. Just because the socket fits into the M + B slot does not necessarily mean it will work. So I consulted a colleague and I am waiting for an answer from him. 

Hi,

Sorry for late answer. I got an answer as below;

"On the r7525 there are multiple backplane configurations. There is a backplane that is NVMe only, NVME and SAS/SATA, or SAS/SATA only depending on what is ordered. If at the time of order an internal PERC and an NVME drive are ordered it will be the combination backplane."

Stumbled across this today and wanted to remind that recent PowerEdge BIOSes have a setting that allows non Dell qualified NVMe drives to be recognized by the BIOS as boot devices:

iDRAC9 -> Configuration -> BIOS Settings -> NVMe Settings -> BIOS NVMe Driver = All Drives

Hi, thanks for your reply. Do you know if the NVME "mode" should be set to RAID or NONRAID for this?

When I navigate to the following:
iDRAC9 -> Configuration -> BIOS Settings -> NVMe Settings; I only see one setting in there and it's asking if the NVME mode should be raid or non-raid. Does it make a difference for what you're mentioning to do?

I have had it set at RAID for a long time, because I wanted to utilize the the S140 raid controller.

Thanks in advance.

A bit of an update here. I can see the drives in VMWare Esxi but I cannot configure the software raid in the S140 configuration (because the the PERC S140 controller doesn't see the drives).

Thanks.