HP M.2 SSDS FOR BLADE SERVERS

HP recently announced the industry’s first M.2 SSD for blade servers.  If you’re not familiar with M.2 (pronounced M dot 2), it’s a small form factor card and connector supporting applications such as Wi-Fi, WWAN, USB, PCIe & SATA seen mostly in desktop / laptop systems.  

Adoption of this form factor in Tier 1 vendors is slow coming, which is why this is a big announcement for HP.  Since this plugs into the system board, it avoids traversing the SAS mid-plane and allows for connectivity to the system PCIe bus supporting faster speeds.

Key points to note:-

• The HP “M.2 Solid State Enablement Kit”  is available in dual and single 64 GB capacity and is compatible with HP ProLiant Gen9 blade servers only.  
• The HP M.2 SSD is supported by the HP Dynamic Smart Array B140i Controller using software RAID.  
• Ideally, the HP M.2 SSD would provide a platform for booting the O/S, however if disks are required on the blade server, they will be controlled by a separate HP Smart Array Controller.  

NOTE: There is a 120GB M.2 offering, however it is only for the HP ProLiant DL series.  The BL series blade servers are limited to 64GB.

Performance Details – 64GB M.2 Enablement Kit, Read Intensive Model

NOTE: Performance shown is for a single 64GB M.2 Enablement Kit and will vary for the Dual 64GB M.2 Enablement.