How can i tell if i will be able to use more than one drive in a single adapter (i have read that there can be issues with this)?
Am i likely to get anything close to the the stated throughput of PCIe (e.g. 4.0 GB/s for x8 on PCIe v2.0)?
I may try to use this machine for some machine learning muck abouts, does anyone have any comments on what to consider if i am thinking of sticking one or two GPUs in there too?
I know there is a good chance I wont be able to boot from it (fine with me so long as it hold my VMs) but how can i tell if this will work (is there a bios option or tech spec that tells me)?
Any hardware recommendations on adapters or super fast drives also welcome !
I’m using an old lenovo xeon workstation presently. The speeds are nothing to write home about but it will barely saturate 10gb ethernet. ~ 1.2 GBs throughput to a single 500gb 970 samsung evo nvme on a pcie adapter. That’s only the 4x3.0 pcie lane single nvme model . bios doesn’t support booting from it but linux mounts it just fine.
I realize this is an old question, but it won’t be the last time it’s asked. PCIe NVMe will not work in the T7500/5500/3500. If you can find a Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe SSD - it uses the PCI Express Gen 2.0 x 4 interface to deliver up to 1400MB/s read and 1000MB/s write with the Marvell 88SS9293 controller that has an onboard OROM, so you can boot from it. It’s an AHCI interface vs NVMe - so it’s not as fast as the best today, but it is faster than a single SATA SSD.
Honestly, I would not go down that path. I’ve used one and it’s great, but it’s expensive, non-standard, and a single point of failure.
A better option is to add HBA cards to upgrade the SATA 2 performance to SATA 3. Here are some options:
SiiG Sata 6gb/s 3i+1 SSD Hybrid PCIe Model: SC-SA0T11-S1 Unit: $90. PCIe 2.0 compatible. Provides 4 x SATA 3 ports for various SSD configurations. One SSD is mounted to the card, from there, you can go with RAID or tiered storage. I would go with RAID 10 so that you get 2 GB/s read and 1 GB/s write. That’s better than the HyperX.
Vantec 2 Channel 4-Port SATA 6 Gb/s PCIe Host Card, Model:UGT-ST622 Unit: $22.00. PCIe 2.0 compatible. Use this for your 7,200 RPM HDDs. You’ll get 250MB/s read & write with a non-RAID configuration.
Vantec 2-Port USB 3.1 Gen II Type A/C PCIe Controller Card, Model:UGT-PC371AC Unit: $22.00. This is to run backups and external storage - like NVMe SSDs in the enclosure below. This is PCIe 2.0 compatible and provides 10Gbps throughput.
CHOETECH M.2 NVME SSD Enclosure, Aluminum USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) to NVME PCI-E M-Key Solid State… $25.99. You’ll get 850MB/s read & write speeds. You can get another USB-C 3.1 v2 and use that for SATA 3 SSDs. You’ll get native SATA 3 throughput (550MB/s).
Dell T7500’s are great bargains and you can really beef them up with just a few $'s spent in the right places. It doesn’t make sense to invest in high-end graphic cards since you only have PCIe 2.0 lanes driving them. I have a little Radeon 460 OC and that runs my 4K monitor and 55" 4K TV just as cool as a cucumber. The max I would go is a GTX 1660Ti. These are the best bang for the buck and won’t turn into a flamethrower if you run some Tensorflow AI notebooks or Overwatch when you’re taking a break from architecting K8s clusters.
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