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VROC Crucial nvme m.2 310 2280 support

markres
Novice
1,021 Views

Hi I have 2x Crucial nvme m.2 310 2280 drives and I am seeing confusing position on support for these drives with Intel VROC. I have an HP Z4 G4 where the drives mount directly onto the motherboard and seem to work fine. However, I want RAID 1 so there is a mirror to protect the drives, are these drives supported? or have they been used in this type of configuration?

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markres
Novice
391 Views

Hi Dinesh

Apologies, I have decided to try the Crucial NVME drives with VROC. So far so good they seem to be working.

I have run a few tests and everything appears in order. 

I have also taken a backup image of the system so if the worst happens it is recoverable, but at the moment everything is ok. 

Looking at the specifications they do seem to be more compatible compared with the Intel drives I mentioned. 

Again thank you for the support and if there are issues, probably will look at a different route,

Mark

 

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Dineshbabu
Employee
988 Views

Hi markres,


Greetings!


Thank you for posting in the Intel Community. We understand that you have queries about Crucial NVMe support. To assist you further, could you please confirm if you are using the drive for the first time, or if it has been used for VROC?


Please refer to the article below for VROC-supported configurations for your reference.


https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000030310/memory-and-storage/datacenter-storage-solutions.html


Regards,

Dinesh

Intel Customer Support Technician

Intel.com/vroc


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Dineshbabu
Employee
944 Views

Hello markres,


Greetings for the day!


We are following up to find out if you were able to find the information we provided. Please reply to confirm, so we can continue helping on a resolution. Looking forward to receiving your reply.


Regards,

Dinesh

Intel Customer Support Technician



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markres
Novice
903 Views

Hi Dinesh

Thank you for the email.

I have spoken to Crucial and the drive has not been tested for VROC.  The concern is that the drives wont be stable and only approved drives (from Intel and other tested manufacturers) according to the documentation can be used. 

I have decided to buy some supported Intel Optane 1TB H10 nvme drives to replace the untested Crucial drives.

I do wonder whether the the fact that the Crucial drives work and are faster than the Intel drives that it would be ok.  It would be helpful to understand from Intel what specifically is required from nvme drive to make it VROC compatible, in particular as the Optane nvme is now obsolete, and worry what to do if I cannot get compliant ones, what to look for in a specification.  Any help understanding this would be appreciated?

Is there some software I can run to check compliancy against specific VROC versions?

Many thanks again

 

Mark

 

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Subhashish
Employee
887 Views

Hello markres,


Greetings from Intel !!


Thank you for your post. After reviewing your request, we would like to share the below article with you:


https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000091943.html


Please go through this article and let us know if it was helpful.



Regards,

Subhashish_Intel.


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Dineshbabu
Employee
855 Views

Hello markres,


Greetings!


Please note that the Intel® Optane™ Memory H10 with Solid State Storage is a special type of drive within the Consumer SSD segment. It is not intended for Data Center applications like the ones in which Intel VROC is used. For Data Center applications, the best choice are the Intel Optane DC SSDs. On the other hand, the Intel® Optane™ Memory H10 with Solid State Storage has reached its End of Interactive Support (EOIS) so there is no technical support available anymore for this product. For more details you can check the following resources:

 

 

Regarding to your question about what makes a particular drive to be compatible with Intel VROC depends from manufacturer to manufacturer. The drives listed in the Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) NVMe* Drives Support List have been tested and validated to work with Intel VROC. In some cases, during validation, issues may happen but those are addressed either with a firmware update developed by the manufacturer, or with a new Intel VROC version. It may also happen though that no extra work has to be done to make the drive work with Intel VROC. The difference with any other drive would be that there is confidence that specific tests were done to validate that particular SSD model to work with Intel VROC.

 

As noted in the same article, any NVMe SSD not listed there may still function with Intel VROC, but support is not provided. Those Crucial drives may work properly, and you may continue using them for your tests, but since they have not been validated by the manufacturer nor by Intel, we won't be able to support any issues that may happen with Intel VROC while using those drives. That's why the general recommendation is to use the drives in the list.


Regards,

Dinesh

Intel Customer Support Technician

Intel.com/vroc


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markres
Novice
843 Views

Hi Dinesh

Thank you! 

Sorry just trying to confirm.

The "Intel® Optane™ Memory H10 with Solid State Storage" will be used on a consumer device which is an HP Z4 G4 Workstation (its a BIG desk top PC) this not for an Enterprise server environment as in for data centres.  The SSD is form factor 2280 which fits into the machine. 

The workstation has VROC 5.4 installed, is there any reason why the Intel SSD would not work and be approved?

I do appreciate that the SSD is now obsolete, but the units are new and I have access to them at a good price. 

Many thanks

 

Mark

 

 

 

 

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Dineshbabu
Employee
820 Views

Hi Markres,


Thank you for your response. The Intel® Optane™ Memory H10 with Solid State Storage is a special type of drive is because this is a hybrid device that is formed by an Intel® Optane™ memory portion + an SSD portion. It is specifically built for drive acceleration using the Intel® Optane™ technology. As you may imagine, this specific purpose also implies some particular requirements. Please refer the User Guides for Intel® Optane™ Memory Devices. That is why we are not recommending this product for RAID applications, such as those used with Intel VROC

 

On the other hand, Intel VROC 5.4 is quite old. For High-End Desktop (HEDT) platforms, we recommend instead a different RAID solution. Please refer to this article for more information Announcement: Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Support on X299 Platforms

 

Regards,

Dinesh

Intel Customer Support Technician

Intel.com/vroc


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markres
Novice
787 Views

Hi Dinesh

Ok. I think there may be some confusion. 

The HP G4 Z4 is a Big desktop PC workstation. It has installed a xeon W-2133 processor with C422 and VROC 5.4. The installation is for WIndows 11 Pro, will be used for home development. 

According to the document Announcement: Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC)... it says in table "What is the difference between Intel® RST and Intel® VROC?" under the column VROC which also refers to Intel processor the following for supported SSD/HDD's.

         * Intel® Optane™ Data Center SSD Series

         * NVMe* Data Center SSDs

         * SATA SSD and HDD

This would suggest that "Intel Optane™ HBRPEKNX0203A 1TB SSD M.2 2280 NVMe Memory H10 with 1TB +32GB NAND" is compliant, as I suspect its under the data center series. 

Do you agree?

Many thanks again

 

Mark

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Suneesh
Employee
778 Views

Hello Markres,


Greetings for the day!


Thank you for your response.


We are reviewing this and will get back to you as soon as possible.


Regards,

Suneesh_intel


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Suneesh
Employee
767 Views

Hello Markres,

 

Good day.

 

The Intel® Optane™ Memory H10 with Solid State Storage is noted under the Intel RST column as part of the group "Intel® Optane™ Memory M/H Series". The group "Intel® Optane™ Data Center SSD Series" refers to the SSDs listed here: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/series/213706/intel-optane-dc-ssd-series.html

 

Please find the Snapshot below for reference.

renditionDownload (6).jpg

 

Regards,

Suneesh_intel

 

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markres
Novice
721 Views

Hi Suneesh

Thank you for the clarification, that makes sense now. 

Looking at these other drives I have not found an 2280 M.2 version they seem to be a bigger form factor or mounted in the PCie slot. 

I will need to have a look at the next steps that I take.

Thank you

 

Mark 

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Sreelakshmi1
Employee
709 Views

Hello Markres,

 

Good day!


Thank you for your response. We will wait for the update.


Best Regards,

Sreelakshmi

Intel Customer Support Technician


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Poojitha
Employee
564 Views

Hi Markres,

 

Greetings for the day!

 

We are following up to check if you were able to find the information we requested. Kindly confirm at your earliest convenience, so that we can continue assisting you in resolving this matter.


Regards,

Poojitha

Intel Customer Support Technician


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Dineshbabu
Employee
401 Views

Hello Markres,

 

Greetings for the day!

 

We would like to inform you that we are closing this request as no response has been received from our previous follow-ups. Please don't hesitate to ask any further questions in the future. Feel free to start a new conversation, as this thread will no longer be monitored.

 

Best regards, 

Dinesh

Intel Customer Support Technician

Intel.com/vroc


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markres
Novice
392 Views

Hi Dinesh

Apologies, I have decided to try the Crucial NVME drives with VROC. So far so good they seem to be working.

I have run a few tests and everything appears in order. 

I have also taken a backup image of the system so if the worst happens it is recoverable, but at the moment everything is ok. 

Looking at the specifications they do seem to be more compatible compared with the Intel drives I mentioned. 

Again thank you for the support and if there are issues, probably will look at a different route,

Mark

 

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