M.2 SSDs and X11SSH-F motherboard

Monkey_Demon

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This web page is very informative: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015...e-interface-that-will-speed-up-your-next-ssd/. But not enough!

I just purchased an ADATA Premier SP600NS34 M.2 2242 128GB SATA III drive. As Ericloewe said, documentation for the x11ssh-f board only says it supports PCIe. So I think I made a newbie goof too.

From what I understand, the 80 mm dimension in the specs for the M.2 slot does not require only 80mm cards. The dimension is just the length of the card, so a smaller one, such as a 42mm card, would fit too. I understand that an 80mm card might have a place to be screwed down on a 2280 connector, but don't these cards sit perpendicular to the MB? If so, where do they screw down?

In any case, I'm now looking at exchanging the ADATA card for an Intel SD 600p Series 128 GB card, which uses PCIe. But are there some alligators here that this newbie is not seeing?
 

Ericloewe

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The vast majority of M.2 slots are set up so that the cards sit parallel to the board.
The only exception I know of are some of Asus' high-end X99 boards.
 

Monkey_Demon

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Thought I'd post my findings...

I've got an Intel 600p M.2 PCI-E Gen 3.0 x4 working on the X11SSH-F motherboard.

Needed no extra drivers or whatever, FreeNAS recognized without any problems.

One thing though ... Your bios won't see the drive unless there's an UEFI supported OS installed on it, so don't worry if you can't find it in there.

So it's compatible with the motherboard. You wouldn't know this from the Supermicro site. The only M.2 boards they've tested are by Toshiba.

I presume you are using the drive as your boot device. Did you have any issues setting this up?
 

Zwck

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So it's compatible with the motherboard. You wouldn't know this from the Supermicro site. The only M.2 boards they've tested are by Toshiba.

I presume you are using the drive as your boot device. Did you have any issues setting this up?

I have, at this very moment, an issue with this drive and the x11ssh board (bios 1.0b), as i installed FreeNAS in the [BIOS] mode onto this particular drive, i'll report tomorrow if that is the issue after installing the [UEFI] version.
 
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Zwck

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The Intel 600p M.2. works perfectly fine on the X11SSH-F if you install the OS in UEFI mode.
Cheers!
 

mjt5282

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I installed an Intel 600 M.2 128Gb as a ZIL on my mirrored SSD pool (there was a sale on at newegg a couple of weeks ago). FN 9.10.U4 , the device appeared as /dev/nvd0 and I was able to add it to my existing SSD as ZIL on the command line. I usually use gpart to resize SSD ZIL's but I couldn't figure out how to resize this device with gpart. I also usually add a 2gb swap partition if creating things at the shell level, but again failed (it may be unnecessary for ZIL partitions).
 

Stux

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It's not really a suitable drive for SLOG is it?

Does it have power loss protection?
 

mjt5282

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It's not really a suitable drive for SLOG is it?

Does it have power loss protection?

Stux, you're right, Kids, don't try this at home ....
 

Monkey_Demon

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Well, I finally bought and set up my server, with a Supermicro X11SSH-F motherboard. Now I'm getting it ready for the OS. I'd like to use the built-in RAID, but Supermicro's guide only says it's compatible with Windows. Can someone with more experience please shed some light on this?
 

mjt5282

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Under FreeNas 9.10.*, all pools are full-fledged ZFS vdevs, meaning the freenas-boot partion can be a zfs mirrored vdev. You don't rely on pre-boot BIOS mirroring or anything like that, the Freebsd kernel + ZFS can mirror the boot devices so that they will run even if one half of the mirror dies. Or you can periodically backup the configuration and rely on a single striped vdev, and reinstall + add the configuration if the boot drive dies. In a non-production or homelab situation, this might suffice.
 

Zwck

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after 6 month of using it. The Intel 600p M.2. works perfectly fine 60% of the time, i have the issue that sometimes when i reboot it boots and fails, i don't really understand why.

Are there any specific bios settings that i am supposed to use?
 

LimeCrusher

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I also have my eye on PCI3 x16 AICs which support 4x 4x M2. They exist for PCIe2 (circa 8GB/s), but as soon as they exist for PCIe3 (requires expensive PCIe switches unless your mobo has PCIe bifurcation support), then it should be possible to build a 2-8TB stripe which does about 15GB/s, using just one PCIe x16 slot.
Bringing that old thread back to life but this made me laugh :-D
Did you eventually proceed in building that super fast stripe ?
 
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Does anyone know how to get a m.2 sata ssd working with the x11ssh-f via a pcie adapter? I tried earlier today and couldn’t see the drive in the bios or in freenas.
 

Ericloewe

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Does anyone know how to get a m.2 sata ssd working with the x11ssh-f via a pcie adapter?
You don't, what makes you think that would be possible? One is called "SATA" and the other "PCIe" for a reason.

There are adapters out there that include SATA controllers, but they're going to be crappy Marvell controllers at best, Super China Happy Sun Great Value S-ATA Kontroller-brand at worst.

Basic PCIe (which exclusively means NVMe these days, although they could conceivably be AHCI) SSDs are pretty cheap these days, probably cheaper than a SATA SSD + a SATA controller.
 

Monkey_Demon

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So it's compatible with the motherboard. You wouldn't know this from the Supermicro site. The only M.2 boards they've tested are by Toshiba.

I presume you are using the drive as your boot device. Did you have any issues setting this up?

Sorry to take so long replying to this. I didn't notice your question until now.

I've had absolutely no issues whatsoever. If I don't list the devices on my machine, I don't even know the M.2 drive is there.

However, now that my system is being used as my main server, I probably should back up the M.2 more often.
 
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