PCIe SSD - UCS C420M3

[David Kondicz]

I tryed to replace my SAS disks in Cisco UCS C420M3 but the performance is quite poor in Vspehere 6.5 also in any raid... Tryed raid 10,5,1.

From that reason i am thinking about SSD disk to PCIe slot. 

That i am thinking about

2x Kingston KC1000 960 GB PCIe

or

2x Intel SSD 900p 480GB PCIe

or

Intel® SSD DC P3520 Series (1.2TB, 1/2 Height PCIe 3.0 x4, 3D1, MLC)

What do you think about it? Does them support my UCS C420M3 ?

My stupid question is how to make a raid from them?For eg. Raid 1. I never worked with PCIe SSD before. 

The main reason is that i want to override RAID controller in my server, becouse i think that is the reason of slow storage in esxi.

Thanx for help.

Br

Dave

[Evan Mickel]

SSD support is indicated within the spec sheet for your server:

https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/servers-unified-computing/ucs-c-series-rack-servers/c420m3-specsheet-v16.pdf

This will be the guide to follow in terms of which hardware can be applied to the server, we have a specific list of PIDs that we will allow as you know, if the PID being installed is not listed it will not be guaranteed to properly function.

RAID config will be similar but will depend on the controller, some controllers require you dropping into a program, some will require running a specific configuration ISO.  Either way, first step will be determining what hardware you have and what you will be installing.  The configuration guide for the server/CIMC version in question will be what you would leverage to configure the RAID array appropriately.

Thanks!