Collection of reviews on using MULTIPLE M.2 NVMe PCIE X16 RAID CARD

[Peter Suh]

 

Recently, interest in disk volumeization of M.2 NVMe for fast data processing has increased,

and as Synology models such as DS923+ that actually support this are supported,

There is growing interest in devices that can accommodate multiple M.2 NVMe.

 

However, since there do not seem to be many actual users yet, I would like to collect examples of applications to XPE.

 

Below is my review of how I recently recognized 4 M.2 NVMes in DS923+ and proceeded to volume them.

 

 

ASUS TUF B450M-PLUS GAMING + Ryzen 3700X
and used
NVMe #1 is in the onboard M.2 slot
NVMe numbers 2 to 4 used 3 slots of ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 CARD V2.

 

 

The PCIE Bifurcation compatibility list of this RAID CARD is as follows.

 

https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1037507

 

 

In tinycore Linux, 4 are recognized as normal as shown below.

 

tc@box:~$ ll /sys/block | grep nv
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Sep 17 09:06 nvme0n1 -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.1/0000:01:00.0/nvme/nvme0/nvme0n1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Sep 17 09:06 nvme1n1 -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.1/0000:07:00.0/nvme/nvme1/nvme1n1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Sep 17 09:06 nvme2n1 -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.3/0000:08:00.0/nvme/nvme2/nvme2n1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Sep 17 09:06 nvme3n1 -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.4/0000:09:00.0/nvme/nvme3/nvme3n1

 

The DS923+ model was selected, and as you can see, all of them can be used as NVMe volumes.
 

 

 

Edited September 22, 2023 by Peter Suh

[Agente Zeth]

I have tried the: Asus HYPER M.2 X16 GEN 4 card, which is very similar

 

 

MB: ASUS WS C621E Sage + Xeon Silver 4110 x2

4 slots detected, but requires specifying at bios level that the pcie will work as data type

 

Tested on:

DS3622xs+ (must be added manually in extensionPorts)

RS4021xs+ (detected automatically)

 

At the moment I only have 2 installed

 

/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/0000:02:00.0/nvme/nvme1/nvme1n1

/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.4/0000:04:00.0/nvme/nvme2/nvme2n1

[Peter Suh]

2 hours ago, Agente Zeth said:

I have tried the: Asus HYPER M.2 X16 GEN 4 card, which is very similar

 

 

MB: ASUS WS C621E Sage + Xeon Silver 4110 x2

4 slots detected, but requires specifying at bios level that the pcie will work as data type

 

Tested on:

DS3622xs+ (must be added manually in extensionPorts)

RS4021xs+ (detected automatically)

 

At the moment I only have 2 installed

 

/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/0000:02:00.0/nvme/nvme1/nvme1n1

/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.4/0000:04:00.0/nvme/nvme2/nvme2n1

 

 

Addon for TCRP has not been developed to enable more than 2 NVMe on the above non-DT platforms.
I will review this part today and improve it so that there is no limit to the number like a DT-based platform.

 

 

[gogixai7]

I'm interested in using M.2 NVMe drives.

Currently i'm using 5 M.2 NVME drives in my system.
 

Intel Core i5 6500T + noname Chinese MB based on Intel Z270 with PCIE bifurcation support x8x4x4 and 2 NVME slots.

 

 

For the rest of NVME drives I use a board from Aliexpress

 

After testing I stopped on DS920+ loader.

 

Drives are recognized and I can create the storage volume from Web UI.

[Peter Suh]

8 hours ago, Agente Zeth said:

I have tried the: Asus HYPER M.2 X16 GEN 4 card, which is very similar

 

 

MB: ASUS WS C621E Sage + Xeon Silver 4110 x2

4 slots detected, but requires specifying at bios level that the pcie will work as data type

 

Tested on:

DS3622xs+ (must be added manually in extensionPorts)

RS4021xs+ (detected automatically)

 

At the moment I only have 2 installed

 

/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/0000:02:00.0/nvme/nvme1/nvme1n1

/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.4/0000:04:00.0/nvme/nvme2/nvme2n1

 

 

Two or more multi-port support for non-DT platforms

 

 

[gogixai7]

10 hours ago, Peter Suh said:

 

 

Two or more multi-port support for non-DT platforms

 

 

In my case, there is no problem to detect drives on DS3622xs+. But you can't create NVME storage pool using WebUI.
In the same time on DS1621xs+ only 2 NVME drives are displayed in Storage Manager, but storage pool can be created with 2 NVME drives.

[Peter Suh]

3 hours ago, gogixai7 said:

In my case, there is no problem to detect drives on DS3622xs+. But you can't create NVME storage pool using WebUI.
In the same time on DS1621xs+ only 2 NVME drives are displayed in Storage Manager, but storage pool can be created with 2 NVME drives.

 

 

1. There was a recent discussion with @007revad, the developer of this feature, and at the time,
There was an issue where Broadwellnk and Denverton were unable to volume up.

 

https://github.com/007revad/Synology_enable_M2_volume/discussions/109#discussion-5561758

 

However, I missed 007revad's answer at the very end of this discussion.

 

https://github.com/007revad/Synology_enable_M2_volume/discussions/109#discussioncomment-7025526

 

I don't know if the issue of broadwellnk and Denverton will be resolved here.

 

Let's investigate this further today.

 

 

 

2. There is no need to analyze this source, but please pay attention to LINE 61, 67, and 69.

 

These DS918+, DS1019+, and DS1621xs+ are a bit special.

 

Activate NVMe by manipulating the /etc/libsynonvme.so.1 file through Hexa editing.

 

However, in this /etc/libsynonvme.so.1 file, the number of NVMe supported by the original product is limited and its location is designated.

 

Even DS1019+ only has 1 digit.

 

https://github.com/PeterSuh-Q3/tcrp-addons/blob/main/nvme-cache/src/install-nvme-cache.sh#L61

 

[007revad]

5 hours ago, Peter Suh said:

Activate NVMe by manipulating the /etc/libsynonvme.so.1 file through Hexa editing.

 

I suspect there may be something that can be edited in one of the library files so storage manager thinks all the NVMe drives are internal.

 

[007revad]

On 9/23/2023 at 4:55 PM, 007revad said:

 

I suspect there may be something that can be edited in one of the library files so storage manager thinks all the NVMe drives are internal.

 

 

Synology_HDD_db has been updated to allow creating storage pools in Storage Manager for M.2 drives in adaptor cards.

https://github.com/007revad/Synology_HDD_db/releases/tag/v3.3.70