Adding extra NVMe drives to PowerEdge R6515

Hi from the link, these are the only things you can have (and Dell does not have a controller called 940P):
HW RAID: PERC 9/10 - HBA330, H330, H730P, H740P, H840, 12G SAS HBA Chipset SATA/SW RAID: S150
https://dell.to/3YLV9oJ

Sorry, It is H740P not 940

To connect NVMe drives to 10X2.5 of R6515 you need to connect cables as per "Figure 4. Cable routing - 10 x 2.5-inch drive backplane to the onboard controller (NVMe)" of below link

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/poweredge-r6515/per6515_ism_pub/cable-routing?guid=guid-79b47a1a-b7c2-4b63-b2a5-a5645a14c6bf&lang=en-us 

Once it is connected like this all NVMe drives will be available under software RAID controller. You can changed NVMe setting in BIOS to Non Raid mode to make NVMe drives visible as individual drives.

Server already sent to datacenter for racking. I can access only iDRAC.

do you think from attached photo, the cable already configured? 

Hello maherkhalil,

First we want to verify these Dell branded drives.  You may have a drive that is same model from manufacturer but does not have the validated Dell firmware.

Can you get an image of the drive showing labels that have the Dell Part number for validation?

Next I would recommend Checking BIOS NVMe settings

Make sure the slot is enabled in BIOS > Integrated Devices

And confirm you have correct BIOS > NVMe Settings

Owners manual  : https://dell.to/3PTlEEP

After confirming the settings above; try swapping  slots see if the issue stays in the slot or follows the drive.

Next you can try Clear NVRAM, then reconfigure any custom BIOS settings:

     Clear NVRAM - there is a map under the lid to show the jumper location. Shut down,  Set jumper to the Clear position, power on and Post up to the jumper error, shut down and return jumper to original location.

From this picture it is looks like all required cabling for NVMe SSD drives are available on this server

Hello 

The server is new. I only purcahsed NVMe SSD drives from another supplier but other items shipped from dell on the server on december,2022

Can you check Physical Disks and Enclosures page and see whether NVMe drives are inventoried?  Can you share the details NVMe drives installed on the server

As a person who have to spec, configure and order Dell Server on a daily basis i can say the following

1. I cant remember to a case when choosen a specific option that you later need special cabling or different stuff. Normally the servers coming from the factory with everything you choose during configuration
2. The OSC says there is a 10 bay Option with NVMe only, which doesnt is available with a PERC or another  10 bay with up to 8 SAS/SATA drives or 9 NVMe together with a  PERC*
3. The OSC isnt always right... and things may changed over time

So when you say you have a 10 bay option and a Perc H740p mini its clear for me. If you want use the system as designed no additional cable is needed i think.

The technical guide now adds some confusion (speaking of OSC) but i think the guide is right. Take a look to chapter 6 or page #16 on https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/Product_Docs/en/poweredge-r6515-technical-guide.pdf

Your backplane offer 8 universial slots (SATA/SAS/NVMe) and 2 slots for NVMe only. The controller info are listet as:
CPU direct NVMe; SWRAID
NVMe, Mini PERC (H740P,
HBA330)

I assume the following but you should read the guide to confirm. If you place your NVMe drives in one of the first 8 slots it will go the the swController(S150?) and if you choose the two NVMe only slots (8+9) they will appear as independent devices within your OS (thats what you have ask for). This is what you want when playing with SoftwareDefinedStorage or other kind of OS voodoo

Regards,
Joerg

Yes, Your last answer is what I want. I will use SAS drives provided by dell from slot 1 up to 8 and then I will provide my own NVMe drives on slot 8 and 9 AS INDEPENDENT DRIVES for zfs file system which provide compression and more additional things than controller

Well, using your own drive maybe content for a new thread

Btw. is the screenshot you posted from your iDRAC? I wondering because it shows 10x  U.2 slots which are empty and no 2x SAS SSD (your raid1).

Regards,
Joerg

Hello

U2 NVMe is shown under PCIe while disks are shown under storage

Seems like this might be a related topic for me to bring this up.

As there are a lot of organisations now moving away from VMware. 

Currently our setup which uses the Dual SD card module to host esxi works great for esxi but is not recommend for using with Proxmox, Hyper-V, xcp-ng and various other hypervisors. 

We currently have the following storage setup, first 8x drive slots have 8x SATA SSDs in them used for Starwind Hyper converged setup. With esxi running on the Dual SD card module.

We still have the 2x NVME slots available. Could these two slots be setup in a mirrored raid 1 to install the new Hypervisor OS (Proxmox or xcp-ng). Not sure if raid can be used, but maybe the drives could be used directly just to install the OS. According to this documentation it does seem that it would be possible R6515 drive setup

attached are some screenshots of my PCI configuration and physical SSDs 

Hello, can you visit here https://www.dell.com/community/en/direct-messaging and provide your service tag so that we can see your configuration?

The PowerEdge R6515 system supports

• Up to 4 x 3.5-inch (SAS, SATA or SSD) front accessible drives in slot 0 to 3
• Up to 8 x 2.5-inch (SAS, SATA or SSD) front accessible drives in slot 0 to 7
• Up to 10 x 2.5-inch drives front accessible drives (with 8 SAS/SATA drives in slot 0 to 7 + 2 NVMe drives in slot 8 to 9)
• Up to 10 x 2.5-inch front accessible NVMe drives in slot 0 to 9

Respectfully,