R730 Refuses to boot from PCiE storage

Hi,

PowerEdge 13Gen architecture and firmware have yet to be able to support PCIe M.2 SSD. Only 14 Gen server have the support, but the server only supports Dell BOSS card: https://dell.to/4d7bM53

The article shown, is not a Dell verified source which I am unable to inform if it works on PowerEdge R730, probably best if you would like, you can contact the author for some guidance. 

Technically, from my knowledge, the OS is not able to boot from the card is due to that the mainboard slot is not able to communicate with the card, hence driver is needed. This happens even in Dell PERC card during OS manual installation, the server will not be able to boot due to communication difficulty, lack of driver software controls. 

I've review the article you have attached, the author did mention about "When Windows setup is complete it will reboot. It will be unable to do because the Dell UEFI does not have any NVMe support. But don’t worry about that!" Probably have you already tried the next paragraph Setup the Clover EFI USB Boot Stick. 

Looks like the R730 is a Dell 13 generation with socket LGA2011-3, I have the T420 which is a 12 Generation and I am booting normally everyday with a NVMe Samsung 950 PRO 512Gb into one of the PCIe slot without the need of Clover, this Samsung 950 PRO is a very special NVMe drive and which is the only one of its kind because is  able to boot from Legacy BIOS, anyway I attempt to use this exact same drive in a much newer 14 generation Poweredge T440 and so far even if is actually showing up in the available Booting options when I click on it to proceed to boot the result is "No boot drive available click F2 or etc etc" I found some information about "hopefully" a variety of possible PCIe NVMe SSD booting options in the forum linked below, 

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/The-truth-about-z620-z820-NVMe-SSD-boot/td-p/7684160/page/3

Thanks for providing your experience.

@DELL-Joey C​ Does this mean I should use a dell BOSS card instead of my Pthe CiE card? I have my 2 M.2's in raid1 and I just want them to have to be bootable.

I did see the Clover option, but if the BOSS card is easier than doing that, I would rather, but I'm not sure if the BOSS card is supported for my r730.

Meemkade,

Unfortunately the R730 doesn't support the BOSS-S1 card, as seen on the page here, supported wasn't added until the 14th generation servers. 

@DELL-Chris H ​ I assume I should use the clover method then? Or is there a different option that's easier?

Just curious, have you tried setting bios mode to UEFI, then install OS, then see if it boots? 

Rey
#Iwork4Dell

@DELL-Rey G​ I have, uefi has been on all this time

Hi,

There isn't any other option to try with, as I mentioned, it is the support capability of the server. I wish we have more documentation or more hardware support information, but there isn't for 13 Gen server. 

Do give Clover steps a try from the article you posted and if it is successful, please do update us.