Industry’s First NVMe Boot Device for HPE® ProLiant® and HPE Apollo Servers Delivers Simple, Secure and Reliable Boot Solution based on Innovative Technology from Marvell
Today,
operating systems (OSs) like VMware recommend that OS data be kept completely
separated from user data using non-network RAID storage. This is a best
practice for any virtualized operating system including VMware, Microsoft Azure
Stack HCI (Storage Spaces Direct) and Linux. Thanks to innovative flash memory technology
from Marvell, a new secure, reliable and easy-to-use OS boot solution is now
available for Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) servers.
While there are
32GB micro-SD or USB boot device options available today —
with VMware requiring as much as 128GB of storage for the OS and Microsoft
Storage Spaces Direct needing 200GB — these solutions simply don’t have the
storage capacity needed. Using hardware RAID controllers and disk drives in the
server bays is another option. However, this adds significant cost and
complexity to a server configuration just to meet the OS requirement. The
proper solution to address separating the OS from user data is the HPE NS204i-p NVME OS Boot Device.
Thanks to innovative NVMe technology
from Marvell, this award winning boot device from HPE delivers reliable
and easy-to-use server boot capability for system administrators deploying HPE
servers. The HPE NS204i-p is a standalone solution that requires a single PCIe
slot in the server and uses standard OS NVMe drivers to provide 480GB of secure
RAID 1 storage for the OS data. No special software is required for the RAID
management as everything is self-contained in the hardware.
The target
customer is anyone using HPE ProLiant or HPE Apollo servers with VMware or any
other virtual server OS looking to optimize server platform density by
eliminating the need to use drive bays for OS data storage. That also means it
is ideal for any hyperconverged infrastructure solution, as they are all based
on virtual server operating systems. This includes HPE vSAN ready nodes, HPE
ProLiant DX servers for Nutanix, Microsoft Azure Stack HCI implementations and
HPE Nimble DHCI, to name a few. This also provides another option for HPE
ProLiant customers wanting to deploy diskless servers that connect to shared
storage disk arrays, such as HPE Primera or HPE Nimble storage.
The HPE
NS204i-p is the industry’s first NVMe boot controller. This single-slot PCIe
controller includes 480GB of integrated RAID 1 storage that provides complete isolation
of the OS data from the user data in the server. The HPE NS204i-p supports
secure firmware update and is designed to allow the OS to be installed on the
device using mirrored RAID 1 storage. The new boot device is supported on
select HPE ProLiant and HPE Apollo server and systems as shown in the list
below.
It should be
noted that no user data should be stored on the NS204i-p, only Server OS and
boot data. The drives used are read-intensive, so they are ideal for booting an
OS, but are not optimal for random access to user data. In addition, there are
only two lanes of the PCIe bus connected to these drives, meaning random access
performance would be limited. The enterprise-class M.2 drives support Power
Loss Protection and are replaceable should a failure occur.
The solution is
centered around the Marvell 88NR2241 NVMe RAID accelerator.
This device connects to two 480GB M.2 NVMe drives over a PCIe bus on the
board and provides two critical functions. First, the Marvell 88NR2241 ASIC
provides automatic RAID 1 protection and management for data stored on the
drives. In addition, it presents a virtual drive to the host CPU over the
server PCIe bus, making the entire device look just like a single 480GB NVMe
drive. Because it is presented as a standard NVMe drive, native OS NVMe drivers
are used for VMware, Microsoft and Linux operating systems. With no special
drivers or software to install, this solution is greatly simplified as compared
to traditional RAID controllers or software RAID installations.
Management for
the HPE NS204i-p is built into the device itself. There is no user
configuration or setup required. The administrator can access the device using
the HPE iLO and UEFI system management console. Device configuration details,
firmware versions and RAID configuration information can be viewed by the
administrator. This information is read-only, and there is nothing for the
administrator to configure on the device. The administrator can execute what is
called “Media Patrol” on the device, which performs a sector-by-sector data
consistency check on the two M.2 NVMe drives. But that’s it. There is nothing
else to configure or manage on the HPE NS204i-p.
In summary, when
deploying HPE ProLiant servers or HPE Apollo systems with virtualized operating
systems, the HPE NS204i-p NVMe OS Boot Device is an ideal default setup for
server configurations. This device provides a simple, secure, reliable and
cost-effective way to separate the OS and user data within the virtualized
server. For more information view the product
overview video, or for questions
contact the
Marvell HPE team.
Tags: 88NR2241, NS204i-p, NVMe Boot, NVMe RAID Controller, VMware Boot