Hi. I am trying to figure out how to get high-speed storage in my R640 server. I just want to use consumer-grade NVME disks, so I can write data at ≥ 1GByte/sec per disk. Do you have any suggestions on what hardware to choose?
The first thing that you should do is see if your server supports Nvme drives and which bays do. If I’m not mistaken not all R640 have bays that support Nvme.
If it supports Nvme drives then it has a backplane with U.2 connectors. Both U.2 and U.3 drives are compatible. These type of drives are enterprise only, and unless something has changed recently, consumer grade 2.5" Nvme SSDs don’t exist.
New enterprise SSDs are very expensive (used are hard to find) and they’re only worth it if you’re going to write a lot to the disk.
Apparently there are m.2 to u.2 enclosures, which would allow you to use cheaper consumer drives. I’ve never used them, so I don’t know how good they’re. They may be total crap, so do your research before you buy such an enclosure.
The last option is to buy consumer grade Sara SSDs. This is the cheapest by far right now and probably the best idea unless you know you need faster drives. Sequential speeds of almost 600MB/s. Compatible with Sata/SAS ports, but not with u.2 ports.
For drives up to 4TB I’d recommend TLC and if you want 8TB drives I’m pretty sure there’s only QLC.
Thanks. This is very useful.
I did find out about the U.2 interface is what is needed for NVME disks on server backplane. But when I for example try to search for nvme disks with U.2 interface on Dells webpage, I don’t find anything. Also I have not been able to find any info on which Dell R640 servers support U.2.
I need to go above at least 800MByte/s write speed, preferably a bit more.
Perhaps I could use something like this https://global.icydock.com/product_172.html ?
There may be some sort of marking that indicates if the bay is only accepts Nvme drives on the front of the drive tray. Line this.
Another option would be to open the server and find the part number for the backplane on Google or Dell’s page.
U.2 connectors and sata connectors are pretty similar, so It will be hard to tell only by watching the connector.
The link you’ve provided is the type of enclosure I’ve mentioned, that goes from m.2 to u.2 . I’ve never used one of those before, so I don’t know how well they work, but there could be compatibility issues with some operating systems, especially if you plan on setting up RAID.
If the backplane ends up having SAS connectors, you could try and get used enterprise SAS SSDs. Sometimes they can be had for about the same price as consumer SATA SSDs. And the max sequential speed is 1.2 GB/s.
If you have a PCI-Express slot available, you could also buy a Nvme to PCIE adapter. Many aren’t expensive and work quite well (I use one to have a Nvme drive in an old computer). However depending on the BIOS/UEFI booting from an Nvme doesn’t work.
