VROC in unRaid

[frodr]

Hi,

 

I have a VROC supported Acer PCIe card with 4x NVMe M.2 ssd slots and VROC supported motherboard. Before buying a VROC key, I wonder if anyone has tried/views on if this will work. To passthru the controller itself or passthru each ssd to vm`s. 

[tjb_altf4]

You don't vroc in unraid, it's only needed if you need a bootable m.2 array, such as under native windows

[frodr]

4 minutes ago, tjb_altf4 said:

You don't vroc in unraid, it's only needed if you need a bootable m.2 array, such as under native windows

The main objective was actually not to get VROC in unRaid, but to have the possibility passthru M2. NVMe drives to VM`s. I purchased ASUS HYPER M.2 X16 CARD V2 only to find out that 1 of 4 drives was visible for unRaid. My thinking was that this was due to the motherboard not making all drives visible due to lack of VROC key. I didn't plan to run VROC functionality, just to the the NVMe drives available for passthru.

[JonathanM]

Some brief googling on that card suggests it doesn't work like that. It appears to be a software based RAID, and not able to expose all the M.2 slots directly.

[frodr]

1 hour ago, jonathanm said:

Some brief googling on that card suggests it doesn't work like that. It appears to be a software based RAID, and not able to expose all the M.2 slots directly.

Thanks for googling for me.

[tjb_altf4]

13 hours ago, frodr said:

The main objective was actually not to get VROC in unRaid, but to have the possibility passthru M2. NVMe drives to VM`s. I purchased ASUS HYPER M.2 X16 CARD V2 only to find out that 1 of 4 drives was visible for unRaid. My thinking was that this was due to the motherboard not making all drives visible due to lack of VROC key. I didn't plan to run VROC functionality, just to the the NVMe drives available for passthru.

For this to work, the motherboard needs to support bifurcation, such as on AMD x399 and Intel x299.

This splits a x16 slot into x4 x4 x4 x4, the Hyper m.2 physically splits the lanes to provide separate slots for each m.2

 

VROC merely allows a NVME RAID array to be bootable and will not enable visibility of those devices on its own.

If your motherboard does not support bifurcation, you need a different card that has a PLX chip or some sort of controller.

Edited May 28, 2019 by tjb_altf4

[frodr]

9 hours ago, tjb_altf4 said:

For this to work, the motherboard needs to support bifurcation, such as on AMD x399 and Intel x299.

This splits a x16 slot into x4 x4 x4 x4, the Hyper m.2 physically splits the lanes to provide separate slots for each m.2

 

VROC merely allows a NVME RAID array to be bootable and will not enable visibility of those devices on its own.

If your motherboard does not support bifurcation, you need a different card that has a PLX chip or some sort of controller.

The motherboard supports bifurcation. Should I be able to see all 4 drives then?

 

https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C620/X11DAi-N.cfm

[tjb_altf4]

Youll need to enable it on the specific pcie slot in the bios, looking at the manual, 'auto' might do the job, otherwise force 4x4x4x4x

[frodr]

37 minutes ago, tjb_altf4 said:

Youll need to enable it on the specific pcie slot in the bios, looking at the manual, 'auto' might do the job, otherwise force 4x4x4x4x

Thanks, you helped me a lot. First 3 beers on me.....