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May 27th, 2020 07:00
Dell R720 Boot from NVMe / DVD Adapter
Hello Dell Community,
I recently purchased a Dell R720 with the hopes of occupying the 8x HDD trays and booting off an NVMe drive within a PCIe adapter. After googling around, it seems this isn't possible, can anyone confirm this?
The next option I tried was using this https://www.amazon.com/Tray-Universal-12-7mm-Enclosures-ThinkPad/dp/B075846MD2/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=dvd+to+sata+adapter&qid=1590587848&sr=8-5 and replacing the DVD drive with a SATA SSD and unfortunately, that is not recognized at all as a device.
Are there any other options with the R720 to add a boot drive (i.e SATA or NVMe) that isn't in the front of the chassis or am I stuck booting from a USB/SD Card?
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Yannik_Z
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November 4th, 2020 12:00
Okay, it might be a bit late and Paul @paul_1011 was pointing it out in an article he shared - but to keep a bit more information in this thread rather than on an additional outside ressource:
The point is, that 12th gen Servers lack the NVMe drivers necessary to recognise a NVMe drive at BIOS/UEFI level. The drivers necessary for this awareness were AFAIK added only to the UEFI bioses of later gen models (iirc >= 13th generation).
There is an NVMe Flash option available to the R720 line up, but it will not add boot support, as this option is built around a PCIe 3.0 x16 adapter (D P/N YPNRC ) that splits those 16 lanes into 4x4 lanes with each lane than being occupied by one NVMe flash drive. The drives are thus only presented via PCIe to the OS, but not to the BIOS/UEFI, as Daniel @DELL-Daniel My states here Dell R720 with PCIe SSD-Backplane and Extender Card but no drives showing .
So in short: there is NO direct way of booting NVMe drives on 12th gen DELL servers. However, you can do a simple trick to boot an OS stored on NVMe - and that's what Paul linked in his post:
Boot to an (internal) USB/internal SD-card on which a boot loader like Clover resides. Add NVMe drivers to that boot loader to make the OS stored on your NVMe drive (e.g. a M.2 NVMe SSD connected via an adaptor in the back) visible to Clover. Clover will then boot from that NVMe drive.
Kind regards and stay safe
Yannik
DELL-Chris H
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May 27th, 2020 13:00
Nwinnc,
I am not showing the R720 as supporting NVMe drives. Now there would be ways (depending on chassis) to boot from drives not on the front of the server, but would require the rear backplanes in order to boot off SSDs from there. If you private message me the svc tag i can confirm the chassis configuration and if this is a possibility.
Let me know.
DELL-Chris H
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Dell Technologies | Enterprise Support Services
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BGZGaming
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June 20th, 2020 11:00
I'd be interested in finding a nvme solution that can boot from the back-plane PCIe. I'm trying to install debian and while it always seems to install I can't get it to boot from any of the available drives of the H710P Mini raid controller that has been flashed to IT mode.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
DiegoLopez
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June 22nd, 2020 02:00
Hello @BGZGaming!
So the main problem I see here is that per default the PowerEdge R720 does not officially support NVMe. This does not mean it won't work but just we don't know what issues you may encounter.
The PCIe backplane connects directly to a PCIe bridge card(YPNRC). It is not an auto-detecting or auto-switching backplane that routes drives based on type. The backplane only supports PCIe drives. Only a single PCIe bridge card is supported in the system, and the bridge card only supports one backplane.
Regards.
paul_1011
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October 6th, 2020 01:00
You can boot directly off an PCIe NVMe drive quite easily with a cheap adapter. I tried it on a server much older than an R720 and it worked fine.
Please see this blog post for details:
How to install and boot a Dell PowerEdge from a PCIe NVMe drive
You can also boot from an SSD in the Optical Drive bay, but that is not as fast:
Install an SSD in the Optical Bay of a 13th Generation PowerEdge