I’m looking at upgrading from a quite venerable HP proliant N40L, and I’ve ordered a SuperMicro X11SSH-LN4F motherboard plus Xeon E3-1220 v6 processor.
Intention is to house them in an unimaginative Fractal Design Node 804 though probably only using 5-6 hard disks.
My questions relates to a boot drive. I’m aware that motherboard is limited to PCIe 3.0 x2 M.2 cards, so speeds are limited. Looking at second-hand options, you can pick up Intel optane M10s in 32 or 64GB sizes pretty cheaply.
I know they have more use in larger builds as additional RAM. Is using one as a boot drive a particularly good or bad idea? Thanks.
Should say also I have read the hardware guide which suggests it doesn’t much matter, but thought I’d check!
I’m unsure what your problem is…
Any x4 M.2 drive can go in a x2 slot (or even a x1) slot. Performance is largely irrelevant for a boot device—but using a NVMe device here is a good way to keep all SATA ports for data drives.
Optane M10 drives are too small to be of use as L2ARC. But they make very fine boot drives, and even the 16 GB variant is plenty for CORE: These are now my standard boot drives.
Using smaller Optane m.2’s as a boot drive is a great idea. Like @etorix mentioned even the 16GB varieties would work. I’ve been using m.2’s as boot drives for all of my TrueNAS installs for the last 3 years. The most full boot drive is sitting at ~ 22GB in a TrueNAS Scale box and that’s because I’ve not deleted any of the updates since build. One of them has been going since the FreeNAS days where it was previously running on a pair of 16GB USB drives. Even a x1 lane will be enough for what that drives needs to do.
Thanks both very much - reassuring to know these work well! They seem about the same price for a 32GB drive secondhand as the larger SSD options which from what you both say seem overkill in terms of space.
I suppose I’m wondering about the former on the vague assumption that having 256GB SSD storage wouldn’t be a bad idea, but equally I’m not sure what exactly I would do with it. Apps, maybe?
I’d opt for a 32GB Optane drive for twice the money. 16GB was what my first mini shipped with and it meant keeping a bit of an eye on the fill state. With 32GB, you can ignore the boot drives for a few years. I’d avoid hybrid SSD drives since the front-end/back-end cache flush process is one more thing to go potentially go wrong.
I use two SATADOMs but that’s only because my motherboard came with two motherboard SATADOM sockets.
Update on this in case anyone’s interested - the drives arrived (I ordered two, one as a backup) - but seems likely they aren’t genuine. Not recognised under Ubuntu nor Windows, Intel’s memory and storage tool doesn’t recognise them, and the serial numbers aren’t found on the Intel website. Although they look genuine, I’m reluctant to entrust my OS to them. Which is a shame!
Weird - I’ve purchased a few of them in recent months, and had no problem with them for pfSense boot drives or as L2 caches on Windows. The only catch I had in Windows was I had to go to Computer Management first and format it before it would be recognised as a drive that could be used as a cache drive.
I’m thinking about buying such 32GB Intel Optane disk for my boot drive, but I have to admit that I’m a bit surprised how cheap they are (on Ebay or Aliexpress), so I would not be surprised if most of them are fake.
Do we know if there’s a way to confirm whether or not an Optane drive is legit or not ?
For example, are we sure that the ones sold by Intel are indeed recognized in their memory and storage tool, and that the serial numbers are found on Intel website ?
The very low latency would be difficult to fake…
As for the price, what’s surprising? This is a discontinued, commercially outdated, product: Whatever stock is left goes on liquidation sale.
What would be surprising is that someone invests any effort to make fakes to be sold for pocket change.
It is amazing what is getting faked out there. I’d start with what the reseller is selling. If they’re into all things data center and they have a good reputation on eBay, that’s a really good sign. Getting into the weeds re: what is and what isn’t real intel is out of my wheelhouse, sorry.
We’ve all seen the improbable flash ram USB sticks being sold on Amazon for 1/4 of market price, or less, and someone is buying them. That Amazon refuses to crack down on obvious fakery is for another time.
But it’s also a reflection of the differential / regional pricing that some OEMs are still trying to enforce.
Curiously, a lot of the Optane memory being offered ATM on eBay is in the form of engineering samples. You’d think they ran out of those a long time ago.
Anyhow, I do wonder if I should replace the SATADOMs in my boot pool with something more persistent and a SATADOM based on a Optane stick would likely outlast a SM standard one, no?
I bought from ebay at a very low price. The Intel tool didn’t recognise either - when I queried refunded without complaints. I am sure they are all knockoffs, basically.
I have bought one from AliExpress, 16gb version for 4€… The SSD used for boot die last week (after 5k hours of use … great ) and don’t wanna waste the actual 256gb one (the first have available in home)… Still not used (just tested with an NVME/USB adapter).
Honestly, i’m the one who’s wrong actually not caring about if Is original/fake? For the price, if can not die after 1 year, Is totally worth… We are talking about the boot drive!
I also want to use a pair of these as a boot drives in a 13th gen Poweredge, but of course it doesn’t have the slots. Can someone please recommend a (dual) PCIe adapter that is sure to work with these 16 or 32 GB Optanes?
Thank you!
If you have an x8 slot which can bifurcate x4x4, any passive adapter will do.
If you don’t… reconsider the need for mirrored boot before plunging for a PLX switch.
I thought I would go for mirrored since these drives are so cheap, but it doesn’t look like my Dell T330 can bifurcate the PCIe slot, even though other 13G servers like the R630 and R730 apparently can. I’ll go with single boot drive as you suggest.
Thanks for your help!
Steve.
This is the way. While I have mirrored boot drives, they are not a panacea as @joeschmuck and others have previously explained.
The main issue is that if one drive in a boot pool “dies”, it better be the second one in the boot pool, not the first, or the NAS will be stuck in a bad boot loop. (i.e. the default BIOS will keep trying to load the first disk in it’s boot order, even if it is a disk in a pool)
A high-availability approach is likely more reliable (i.e. where something determines if a boot drive in a cluster is bad, then excommunicates it) but also more complicated to implement. I have never tried this, it is likely above my ability to implement.
I like a boot pool simply for the redundancy it provides. But it’s benefit is marginal. You’re better off making decent backups and storing them remotely.
) and don’t wanna waste the actual 256gb one (the first have available in home)… Still not used (just tested with an NVME/USB adapter).