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NED24 NVMe Expansion Drawer Features

By Sakethan Kotta posted Wed August 07, 2024 08:23 AM

  

 

NED24 NVMe Drawer

The NED24 is the first PCIe attached NVMe expansion drawer for the IBM Power Systems.  The NED24 NVMe expansion drawer is connected to system units by one or more PCIe expansion drawer cable pairs. The NED24 NVMe expansion drawer can hold up to 24 small form factor (SFF) NVMe U.2 drives. The NVMe expansion drawer supports the following operating systems:

  • AIX®
  • IBM® i
  • Linux®

This drawer was initially supported in FW1040 with some limitations;  additional capabilities were added in FW1060.

FW1040 supports Only Single Path

At the time of GA, May, 2023, only Single Path to the drives are supported for the NED24 NVMe Expansion drawer. 

A diagram of a cable

Description automatically generated

NED24 NVMe Expansion drawer has two ESMs (Enclosure Services Manager), each ESM is connected to the P10 system’s cable card through a pair of CXP16 cables and each ESM connects 12 NVMe drives. NVMe drives are configured as single port devices and connected through only one ESM. No path failover capability is available in this release.

More details on the features and limitations can be found here https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6983250

https://community.ibm.com/community/user/power/blogs/pete-heyrman1/2023/06/12/fw1040-information?CommunityKey=71e6bb8a-5b34-44da-be8b-277834a183b0

FW 1060.10 supports Dual Path

Each drive has connection from both ESMs, and NVMe drives are configured as dual port devices with failover capability. On loss of a connection for one ESM, drive is still accessible through the other ESM.

A diagram of a cable

Description automatically generated

In this (MP) Multi Path configuration, both paths of the Drives are connected to a single LPAR. On one ESM (one path) failure, the drive will be accessed through the other path.

Two paths allow concurrent maintenance of the ESM, CXP cabling or Cable Card without losing access to any storage in the NVMe Expansion Drawer.

To take advantage of multi-path, minimum OS levels are required and both paths need to be assigned to the same logical partition through the HMC. When upgrading from FW1040/FW1050 the configuration will remain as single path by default and dual path can be configured from HMC.

Supported AIX® levels:

AIX®  Version 7.3 with the 7300-02 Technology Level and Service Pack 7300-02-02-2420, or later
AIX
®  Version 7.2 with the 7200-05 Technology Level and Service Pack 7200-05-08-2420, or later
AIX
®  Version 7.3 with the 7300-01 Technology Level and Service Pack 7300-01-04-2420, or later

Supported IBM® i levels:

IBM® i 7.4 release or higher with a specific technology refresh

Supported Linux® levels

SLES 15.5 or later
RHEL 9.2 or later

More details on the FW1060.10 can be found here

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/announcements/extends-hardware-capabilities-ddr5-memory-other-enhancements-selected-power10-technology-based-servers

More advanced configurations and features are planned for future releases… stay tuned.

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