SuperMicro X10SDV M.2 connector - is it usable for storage?

TrueNAS General
1

I am intending to upgrade my server storage capacity which is currently 4 x 4TB in RAIDZ1, making use of as much on-board disk connection capacity as possible. In addition to two SATA ports being free, there is an M.2 socket on the board, and I am wondering if this could be used for a 4TB SSD in that form factor. The user manual says the following:

M.2 Socket
M.2 is formerly known as Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF).
The J21 connector is designed for internal mounting devices.
The X10SDV series deploy an M key only dedicated for SSD devices
with the ultimate performance capability in a PCI Express 3.0 X4
interface for native PCIe SSD support. The X10SDV M.2 is mux
with the I-SATA0 port for legacy SATA SSD devices.

There won’t be any need for the long PCIe connector on the edge of the board, eg for an extra SATA card, but I wonder if the stated multiplexing of the M.2 socket with the I-SATA0 port - with which I intend to connect to a separate 4TB 2.5" drive - will slow transfers down or interfere with ZFS requirement to have direct access to the drives.

Does anyone have experience of using the M.2 slot with all other SATA ports in use?

Machine specs
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SuperMicro X10SDV-4C+-TLN4F
32GB ECC RAM
4 x 4TB Seagate IronWolf in RAIDZ1
CSE-721TQ-250B SuperMicro case
PSU 250W
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Yes it is fully usable. Lane sharing is only relevant with M.2 SATA drives.

Note that the PCIe x16 slot can support 4 M.2 (NVMe) drives in a cheap passive adapter card.

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Great! That is really valuable information about the M.2 NVMe adaptor. Therefore am I right in thinking that the drive connections available could be:
4 x NVMe 4TB on a card like that linked
+
1 x NVMe 4TB on the M.2 port
+
2 x 4TB SATA as 2.5" in the dedicated bays

…to supplement the 4 x 4TB HDDs currently connected to the four SATA ports

Thanks so much for this; I had no idea of the storage possibilities.

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Correct. But where do you boot from? :wink:

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Alternatively, you can use an 8x4x4 adapter and get two m.2 cards and an 8x PCIe card (maybe a gpu etc)

Additionally, you can put a 6-way sata adapter into an m.2 slot.

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I was planning to use a small capacity M.2 NVMe drive with a USB3 adapter on one of the external USB3 ports. But with the above extra drive expansion possibilities it might be better to use a SATA-DOM acquired a couple of years ago, and have that as the boot drive in I-SATA0 (as designed by SuperMicro), instead of one of the 2.5" drives. The only reason I hadn’t used it was to keep the designated SATA port for storage instead of boot, but that restriction has quickly evaporated!

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Thank you for the extra options! If I understand correctly, this looks like a riser card to which is attached two 4-port NVMe cards?

I will have to look at the motherboard options for bifurcating the x16; it seems to allow this at least to x8x8.

For the 6-way SATA option, the server case is a mini-tower and unfortunately I am limited by the physical space to just two extra 2.5" drives; hence the attractiveness of the NVMe path.

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Correct. This assumes a full-height slot so there’s still space for a half-height card on top of the riser.

All v.2 X10SDV boards should allow x8x4x4, x4x4x8 and x4x4x4x4, and everything which does not use a D-1520 or D-1541 is a v.2.

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It’s a D-1518, so thankfully neither of the above versions but I will check the BIOS itself to see what the current options are. Also, by now there is probably a firmware update which may improve NVMe support.

Many thanks for all the suggestions - really helpful!

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And the other option is a case transplant too.

X10SDV boards are great :wink:

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Yes agreed re the case transplant. The thing is, I really love the SuperMicro case which I bought separately; it’s the one that iX Systems used for their original FreeNAS Mini and very well thought out. If I can get away with using it for as long as possible, then I’d like to.

Re the board… yes indeed although they are a bit more difficult to obtain in the UK and I couldn’t quite justify the cost of the 8C16T version - which I see you have - and managed to get a second-hand 4C8T with 10GBe from US Ebay at a good price. It has been as solid as a rock :slight_smile:

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