Are PCIe ssd hard drives on client machines supported?

[egregers]

We are getting some new DELL T5810 workstations. They are going to have 1 TB PCIe M.2 NVMe SSD hard drives. Is there anything special that needs to be done for the FOG server to see this drive? We are using FOG version 1.2.0.

Thanks

[george1421]

The issue here is not so much SSD drives but NVMe drives. FOG 1.2.0 does not support NVMe drives at all. Its not related just to the kernel in play, but the actual drive itself and its partitions are named different. The developers had to reengineer the FOS Engine (the customized linux OS that captures and deploys images) to specifically support NVMe drives.

At this point your only option to support these systems is to upgrade to 1.3.0RCx series. Other advantages of upgrading is much better GPT support, native Win10 support, faster image deployment, plus many new feature enhancements.

[Wayne Workman]

George is correct.

[egregers]

Thanks!!!, What is the best flavor of Linux to use for the new version?

[Wayne Workman]

@egregers FOG can run on all major distributions of Linux. Only advice I’d give you, don’t use anything “old”. Whatever you choose, use the latest version.

[egregers]

I have 1.3.0 RC18 installed and when I try to perform full host registration and inventory I get the message

Cannot find hard disk on system.

The drive is an NVMe hard drive.

Will Fog work with this?

[egregers]

@george1421

I have 1.3.0 RC18 installed and when I try to perform full host registration and inventory I get the message

Cannot find hard disk on system.

The drive is an NVMe hard drive.

Will Fog work with this?

[Tom Elliott]

@egregers How do you know RC-18 is installed?

Can you try rerunning the installer after running:

rm -rf /var/www/{html/,}fog

[george1421]

@egregers What I would recommend (along with what Tom posted) is to pxe boot into the FOG iPXE menu and then run the compatibility tests. This will confirm that the FOS Engine can see the local hard drive. This compat test will tell is where the problem isn’t. (FYI, since you are upgrading from 1.2.0 to 1.3.0 the background of the FOG iPXE menu will look different)

[egregers]

@Tom-Elliott
I did this and now it says I am at RC-19. It says RC-19 on the machine I am PXI booting. It still says Cannot find hard disk on system when I run full host registration.

This is a new fog install. I pointed the dhcp to the new server IP.

[Tom Elliott]

@egregers how is the drive set to show up via bios? Ahci, data, raid?

[george1421]

@Tom-Elliott said in Are PCIe ssd hard drives on client machines supported?:

@egregers how is the drive set to show up via bios? Ahci, data, raid?

Along the same lines, how are these drives setup? Are you using the built in intel raid controller in a raid setup? (I have a T3610, and T3620) so I know FOG works with the precisions.

[egregers]

@Tom-Elliott

This is a new machine and it came from dell with Raid On even though there is only one hard drive.

[Tom Elliott]

@egregers please try setting to ahci

[george1421]

@Tom-Elliott said in Are PCIe ssd hard drives on client machines supported?:

@egregers please try setting to ahci

Not to derail this, but instead of changing the bios, how about doing a debug capture to see what FOS is saying about the drives?

Since this has a single disk installed and its NVMe, the OP probably has a M.2 disk installed directly on the motherboard, so there is no sata based disk installed in this computer at all.

[egregers]

@Tom-Elliott
That worked, but it causes the OS to blue screen.

[Tom Elliott]

@george1421 because it’s listed in raid but the raid is not presenting in a software state that might work… Just need the I’d it’s listing with I suspect

[Wayne Workman]

@egregers said in Are PCIe ssd hard drives on client machines supported?:

@Tom-Elliott
That worked, but it causes the OS to blue screen.

You will need to install the OS in AHCI mode, or risk a dirty image by doing some sort of repair. Sorry.

If it were me I’d just re-install so I know my image will be absolutely clean and void of any issues.

[Tom Elliott]

@Wayne-Workman I have a strong feeling that we should be able get this with it’s current state.

Essentially, I think we just need to see what the RAID is presenting as under lsblk/blockdev so I can add it to the code.

[Wayne Workman]

@Tom-Elliott It’s not that FOG can’t capture it, it’s in AHCI mode at this point. It’s that the image is “RAID On” but the firmware has been switched to “AHCI”.