Where to buy your Samsung 960 EVO or PRO M.2 NVMe SSDs, featuring the latest ordering and availability info
There have been many reports of issues with these 960 drives! Please read:
Original article appears below.
This will likely be my last manual update of order status.
As of Dec 20 2016:
Order Samsung 960 EVO M.2 NVMe SSD in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB
- Amazon preorder 250GB In stock. Arrives before Christmas, 500GB In stock. Expected to arrive after Christmas 1TB In stock. Arrives before Christmas. Charged with shipped.
- B&H preorder 250GB MORE COMING SOON Expected availability: 2-4 weeks, 500GB NEW ITEM - COMING SOON Expected availability: Not available, 1TB COMING SOON. Expected availability: Not available. Charged when ordered.
- Newegg notify 250GB OUT OF STOCK, 500GB OUT OF STOCK, 1TB OUT OF STOCK. AUTO NOTIFY button only, no preorders. Charged when shipped.
- Samsung can preorder 250GB, 500GB, or 1TB Product will ship after 12/25, charged when shipped.
Order Samsung 960 PRO M.2 NVMe SSD in 512GB, 1TB, 2TB
- Amazon preorder 1TB This item will be released on December 31, 2016, 2TB This item will be released on January 7, 2017, 512GB is available now.
- B&H preorder 512GB NEW ITEM - COMING SOON
Expected availability: Not available, 1TB MORE COMING SOON Expected availability: 3-5 weeks, 2TB NEW ITEM - COMING SOON Expected availability: Not available - Newegg preorder 1TB and 2TB Release Date: 1/2/2017, 500GB OUT OF STOCK.
- Samsung preorder 1TB Product will ship week of Jan 1, 2017, 512GB and 2TB WHERE TO BUY button only. Charged when shipped.
Dec 24 2016 Update
Initial thermal testing video now available. Please don't forget to review the detailed description before commenting.
Dec 23 2016 Update
They're here! Turns out my corrected Amazon order shows up the very same day as the samsung.com order, not a bad problem to have. Might just go with equipping both Xeon D cluster nodes with these little beasts, we'll see. For actual (albeit unsupported) vSAN testing, will likely need to come up with a different plan, I have some ideas.
Dec 20 2016 Update
When I called in to Amazon support yesterday, they had mentioned that they are using overnight shipping on this new order, as I had specified during the original order, but they didn't yet have an ETA for me. Checking again today, it would seem Amazon did this right, getting me the correct 960 EVO pretty quickly, ETA Thursday Dec 22. Then again, the 1TB is showing back in stock now anyway for new orders as well.
Dec 19 2016 Update
It never did arrive on Sunday, despite the "SUNDAY DELIVERY" stick on the easily opened lightly padded envelope. At noon eastern time on Monday Dec 19, the USPS mailman did arrive. I was a bit disappointed once I easily opened the envelope, seen below.
I even recorded video of the unboxing, not sure I'll both publishing it though, given it's about the least exciting/most disappointing unboxing ever ;-)
Oh well, such things happen. In well over a dozen years of Amazon orders, this is only my second mistake ever, and I'm sure they'll fix it easily, already printed off my UPS drop off label. Where I am on line for this 1TB drive now, well, who knows. Of course, I'm now kicking myself for canceling the B&H Order. Will keep my samsung.com order active, until I have the actual 960 EVO 1TB in hand.
Dec 18 2016 Update
Yesterday, a US customer (not an early blogger eval. recipient) reported receiving his 960 EVO and PRO from Amazon. My Amazon order status states my 1TB 960 EVO will arrive later today, Sunday, Dec 18 2016.
Monday, when samsung.com customer service is opened, I'll cancel that backorder. Since I checked out as guest, there is no way to cancel online.
I canceled my B&H back order easily, online, much preferred over having to call somebody on a weekday.
Dec 16 2016 Update
B&H kindly sent an email at 6:04am today, letting me know my Dec 01 2016 order for my 1TB 960 EVO is still on back order, apologizing for the inconvenience, and giving me the option of canceling. Online order status still shows Estimated Delivery 1-2 Days.
Amazon order status is currently conflicted.
Once I get tracking info from Amazon, I'll then cancel both the B&H and samsung.com orders. Given the reports I'm getting about the 960 PRO having drive recognition and/or BIOS issues with Supermicro Xeon D, there is definitely some TinkerTry'ing needed for this 1TB 960 EVO, for both Windows Server 2016 and VMware ESXi 6.5. Stay tuned.
Updated above order link status pages, most notable change is that all Newegg sizes of 960 EVO are now showing OUT OF STOCK, and Samsung is now taking pre-orders for all verions and sizes, and B&H has moved from Dec 8 estimates for the PRO, to "Expected availability Not Available.""
Dec 15 2016 Update
For the Samsung 960 EVO, status changed.
For the 1TB Samsung 960 PRO 1TB, Amazon now says the 512GB is available, the 1TB will be released on Dec 31 2016, and the 2TB on Jan 07 2017. Newegg still says Jan 02 2017 for 1TB and 2TB PRO sizes, and 512GB out of stock.
Dec 13 2016 Update
See Matt Bach's post at Puget Systems: Samsung 960 Pro vs 950 Pro Performance & Thermal Throttling:
... unless you have a piece of software that is capable of reading or writing hundreds of GB of data at 2-3.5 GB/s, you are very unlikely to ever encounter throttling. And even if you do, when the 960 Pro throttles it tends to still be faster than the 950 Pro at it's best, so you probably would not notice the drop in performance.
Here's my latest samsung.com and B&H order status, no idea what the hold-ups are. Let's start with the TinkerTry commenter who left a very interesting and helpful comment below, followed by order status screenshots.
Dec 09 2016 Update
Dec 01 2016 Update
Availability of the 960 series is a mixed bag right now, with many sites improving their ship date estimates by 2 weeks. Yes, on Nov 30th, most ETAs said early January, and one day later, many estimates moved mid-December. I also just discovered that the elusive EVO 1TB can now be pre-ordered at B&H and Newegg, details below, so I placed my new 1TB 960 EVO at B&H order. Once I get ship notification, I'll cancel my other back-order at samsung.com, since they don't charge cards until shipment anyway. Article title that originally included "ETA 2017?" has now been updated accordingly.
Nov 30 2016 Update
My original order for a 960 EVO 1TB was made on samsung.com back on October 17th, the first day pre-orders began anywhere. It's still on backorder. This article is about what's happened since, contents subject to change throughout December. These are affiliate links, for these drives that work great in VMware (built in driver) and Hyper-V (download/install Samsung's NVMe driver). Recent Linux distros that I also tested with NVMe, like RHEL and SLES, provide excellent speeds as well, using native drivers.
Backstory
Back in 2015, I fell for the extreme performance of my first and only Samsung 950 PRO M.2 NVMe 512GB SSD, leaving my much slower 9265-8i RAID days behind me. See also World's fastest consumer SSD - Samsung 950 PRO M.2 NVMe benchmark results.
Given VMware's enterprise and performance focus, they traditionally favored decent RAID adapters with good queue depths, for improved performance over any SATA attached drive for your VMFS datastores. With the arrival of NVMe, this need for RAID controllers in the home lab all changed, as VMware explains very recently:
NVMe devices are increasingly becoming the primary storage interface for flash-based storages due to its well-designed, low overhead storage protocol and its ability to support scalable IO on multi-core processors.
Knowing I'd have a second cluster node someday, and being totally spoiled by the speeds, my wait for an affordable and performant second NVMe drive in 1TB capacity began. None existed affordably, only hints the 950 PRO might be made in a 1TB size someday. Turns out that will never happen, not in the 950 PRO series anyway. Samsung's summer 2016 announcement of the new 960 product line cleared up that long mystery, with 1TB and 2TB variants seemingly "coming soon."
VMware Support
Warning
These are consumer drives that will likely never join the NVMe based storage on the the vSAN HCL, with things missing, like enterprise prices, and big supercapacitors (for full power loss protection). This doesn't mean you can't try them with vSAN, I'm just talking about support here. That said, these consumer drives have pretty amazing TBW (Terabytes Written) ratings (which enterprise SSDs want, and vSAN needs), checking in at 400 TBW for the 1TB EVO and 1.2PB for the PRO!
Worry not, either 960 will likely work very well for your normal VMFS datastore usage, given how spectacular the 950 PRO has been for my daily use and abuse. Last I checked, I've only used about 20% of the 400 TBW rating, after 13 months of 950 PRO ownership. Performance holds up with multiple VMs hitting one NVMe based datastore, where SATA3 SSDs and HDDs typically become quite slow.
Some more NVMe perks:
- Since you're not booting from these, you can simplify things and skip searching for boot from nvme or reading my How to boot Windows 10 from NVMe based PCIe storage, featuring Samsung 950 PRO M.2 SSD in a Supermicro SYS-5028D-TN4T article.
- With ESXi 5.5 or later, the built-in NVMe driver means it just works, so just install, add datastore/format as VMFS, and you're set! If you're already on ESXi 6.5, pay attention and choose the new VMFS 6. Some upgraders may experience a temporary NVMe slowdown, see TinkerTry's Easy fix for Supermicro and other Xeon D systems experiencing SATA3/AHCI slowdown on ESXi 6.5.
My original 960 EVO 1TB order status updates
My Samsung 960 updates were kind of buried under this article:
so I've also added those updates right below this new article. Figured the info might be helpful to folks interested in the next-generation of M.2 NVMe goodness, for their winter-time home-lab upgrades and/or rebuilds.
Reviews
Nov 15 2016 was apparently the day bloggers with early samples had their embargo lifted, giving us a plethora of technical articles and benchmark results that arrived that day, seen here, including:
-
Samsung 960 EVO 250GB and 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD Full Review - TurboWrite Squared
Nov 15 2016 by Allyn Malventano at PC Perspective -
Samsung 960 EVO M.2 NVMe SSD Review (250GB/1TB)
Nov 15 2016 by Sean Webster at TheSSDReview - The Samsung 960 EVO (1TB) Review
Nov 15 2016 by Billy Tallis at AnandTech
And finally, we have Allyn Malventano giving his clear assessment on PC Perspective 425:
the one I was waiting on, because that's the one that I felt is the real game-changer here, as far as relatively low cost M.2 SSD that uses TLC flash with an SLC cache on it
And now, a journey back in time, updates from previous articles...
Oct 26 2016 Update
Orders for 512GB and 1TB sizes of Samsung 960 PRO are now being taken at:
Amazon
-
Samsung 960 PRO Series - 512GB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V6P512BW)
- Samsung 960 PRO Series - 1TB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V6P1T0BW)
Newegg
-
SAMSUNG 960 PRO M.2 512GB NVMe PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V6P512BW
- SAMSUNG 960 PRO M.2 1TB NVMe PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V6P1T0BW
Oct 17 2016 Update
News broke that the Samsung 960 PRO and EVO are now available for pre-order, but the only source seems to be directly on Samsung's My Orders for now. If you appreciate this article, consider using one of these affiliate shopping links when placing your pre-order, full disclosure details below-right:
Samsung 960 EVO 1TB ( $479.99)
Samsung 960 EVO 500GB ( $249.99)
Samsung 960 EVO 250GB ( $129.99)
Samsung 960 PRO 2TB ($1299.99)
Samsung 960 PRO 1TB ( $629.99)
Samsung 960 PRO 500GB ( $329.99)
Let's try a different sort order, in ascending cost order.
Samsung 960 EVO 250GB ( $129.99)
Samsung 960 EVO 500GB ( $249.99)
Samsung 960 PRO 500GB ( $329.99)
Samsung 960 EVO 1TB ( $479.99)
Samsung 960 PRO 1TB ( $629.99)
Samsung 960 PRO 2TB ($1299.99)
Which one am I getting? At the loss of about 10% overall performance, I'm going with the biggest size in the EVO line, the 1TB Samsung 960 EVO. Why? It features a humongous 42GB of SLC cache, unlike the lower sizes, explained here. That means an entire VM that I clone can fit in its write cache, which should make for some pretty spectacular performance when deploying VMs from templates. This is a common thing when I'm tinkering in my home lab, enjoying my platinum tier of VMware VMFS datastore. Oh, and it's saving me $150 over the same-size 1TB PRO, and I just cannot justify or afford that 2TB PRO.
Good to know that Samsung has added a copper layer to the 960 drive labels, to help spread the heat across a larger surface area. This should further reduce the likelihood of that 30% speed degradation that I noticed ONLY when I abused the drive with synthetic benchmarks with the chassis fan set to default noise profile/speeds. This thermal sticker is explained and pictured at PC Perspective here.
Unlike Intel NVMe drives, it's a nice bonus that Samsung NVMe storage tends to not need any special driver VIB, just the baked-into-ESXi NVMe driver. Sure am looking forward to trying this drive out, hopefully soon!
See also at TinkerTry
-
Easy fix for Supermicro and other Xeon D systems experiencing SATA3/AHCI slowdown on ESXi 6.5
Nov 16 2016 -
Samsung announces 960 PRO, 960 EVO, and SM961 NVMe M.2 SSDs in up to 1TB capacity
Jun 22 2016 - First Look at the FLIR ONE Thermal Imaging camera for smartphones and tablets
Feb 06 2016
All Comments on This Article (58)
I can confirm that 2 960 evo 500gb drives each displayed this behaviour on 2 ASUS x99a-ii boards. I eventually swapped 1 out for an intel 600p which works fine. The 960s also both worked completely fine on a ga-z170mx-gaming5
So this isn't limited to server boards, it also seems to happen on X99 chipsets too. And the problem was very pronounced, to the point where I swapped cpus, psus. ssds, boards, ram. Trying to be absolutely certain there's some errata on the 960 series samsungs that cause it to not appear in the bios on those boards. Very weird behaviour.
Also, Disqus is garbage, and requiring people sign up for it because you list no email contact is garbage too.
I really appreciate the details you've typed up, see also:
https://tinkertry.com/supermicro-superserver-bios-change-can-cause-960-pro-and-evo-to-hide-heres-the-fix
where you'll see folks also reporting this happens on some other motherboards too. This is a very strange issue indeed.
Glad to know that I'm not the only one experiencing problems with the SuperMicro X10SDV boards and the Samsung 960 series! I just got a 960 evo (pre-ordered it before the 16th on NewEgg, still wasn't shipped by the 26th, ordered it directly from AntOnline, got it 1/3/17) and connected it to my X10SDV-F and it was detected in Arch Linux and FreeBSD 11....then it wasn't upon reboot, then it was then it wasn't. During these I was indeed going into the EFI Firmware settings which caused it not to be detected. I disconnected the NVME drive and reseated it (without completely killing power to the system, IPMI was still active, system was shutdown) and booted back up and there it was! I'm on the original firmware that came with my board, v1.1 from 3/2/2016.
Fantastic Microsoft article, thanks Robert! I'll probably try to bring some additional attention to this topic in the future as well. Really appreciate it!
Hi Paul,
glad to here you could replicate and that i could contribute and shed some light on this odd issue ... Very curious about the root cause of this and I hope that SM will recognize that this needs some investigation and fixing - It for sure won´t be the most uncommon setup ;-)
cheers,
Robert
P.S. (a little bit OT) - Something SSD-Tech-Info about Consumer-SSDs you and your readers might be interested in .... (Should be valid for vSAN as well)
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/filecab/2016/11/18/dont-do-it-consumer-ssd/
I have just replicated the problem (using my 960 EVO) while recording video, and will be sharing this video to Supermicro. Thank you again!
Yeah, the EVO line just got shipped about a week ago, I've been waiting for over a month. I agree with the 'never the bleeding edge' philosophy but this didn't seem that far out at the time. The1.0b BIOS just came out less than a couple months ago so my hope was the timing lined up to contain fixes for any issues with the PRO, no such luck. It would be interesting if Supermicro posted bugfixes with their BIOS/firmware releases.
This is the only place so far I've found an answer (admittedly just started) so any additional assistance will be icing on that cake. I'll follow up with whatever Supermicro says once they get back to me. Feel free to reference my case #SM1701012591, although I didn't know the temporary solution until I'd opened it, which I'll add once they contact me.
Yes, I've collected all the reports into one email I'm sending to my Supermicro contact. Very interesting to hear your report for many reasons, including:
1) you're the first 960 EVO report here (the rest were 960 PRO)
2) you're the first Flex ATX report here with BIOS 1.0b, the rest were Mini ITX with BIOS 1.1b
I hadn't ever tried 1.0b (no longer have the Flex ATX in my lab), only 1.0a (on borrowed E300 and E200-8D systems), and of course those worked fine with predecessor Samsung 950 PRO:
https://tinkertry.com/supermicro-superserver-bios-11c-and-ipmi-346-released
THANK YOU, TheGrayGhost!
If you are collecting examples of this issue and it's questionable fix, you can include my setup as an example. I have a X10SDV-7TP4F with the most recent BIOS, 1.0b, and a Samsung 960 EVO 500G. I bounced against the board not recognizing the NVMe SSD for a while, threw up hands, opened a support request against Supermicro, and was walking away when a last ditch google sent me here. I can confirm a full power off and restart without accessing the BIOS, where I'd been going to make sure everything is recognized properly, and the SSD goes from a lost cause to showing up in my test install of Centos 7, installed on a separate SSD. I haven't tried installing an OS to the NVMe SSD but I'd have concerns about setting boot order with a drive that disappears when the BIOS is accessed; when attempting to set boot order at boot (via F11) the NVMe SSD disappears again.
I'll be updating my Supermicro support request with this info since, presumably, this is on their side. Hopefully enough attention will garner a fix. I'll be checking back for updates. Thanks!
This info is crucial. It's good I remembered reading it here, thanks Robert.
Phew, glad your story ended well, thanks for sharing. This is such a strange bug, I'll need to do a post about it, to spare others the same grief. Haven't seen the behavior yet with my 960EVO, but then again, haven't been into the BIOS since the install either, will record when I do, in case the issue strikes the EVO as well.
so glad we have this site! spent a day on getting the 960Pro-512 to work in my x10sdv to no avail. I already repacked it, ready for return to the shop I bought it. As I was still searching I came across this post of Robert: and it works! unplug, not touching bios, and VMware6 is able to identify it, thanks so much!!!
Just wanted to report that I've had the same issue. After hours of troubleshooting, I re-seated my EVO 960 256GB card and instead of screwing it down, left it free in the slot. Rebooted and it came back! I was convinced that it was a bad card or M.2 slot until coming here. Have since secured the card with the screw and rebooted and everything worked great if I just left the BIOS alone. Explains why I initially saw the card and had it disappear. I have the SYS-5028D-TN4T as well. Thank you to everyone that posted! I wish the problem didn't exist, but much better than thinking I had a hardware problem on my new server or EVO card! Does seem consistent, if you touch the BIOS after installation the card will disappear.
Looks like I'm all set too, will likely have my 960 EVO 1TB on Thursday, Dec 22nd (they're back in stock for new orders too), all item's status now updated above as well: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/22d16df22e456829ffcdb0ec6c1bd90d142396712b8f25ad288d8d6fd0929156.png
https://TinkerTry.com/samsung-960-pro-or-evo-might-be-backordered-into-2017#dec-20-2016-update
No worries, I'll still be following this thread though. I am building my first PC and figured I'd go all out - it's going to be a liquid cooled build in a small form factor mini ITX chassis (NCASE M1). I'm hoping to post some videos as the build comes along!
Glad you're all set, and so nice of you to offer! Let's hope I don't need to take you up on that, and please don't hold up on returning or canceling on my account, that wouldn't be fair. May I ask what system you're testing this in?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8d7a51eca086556bff9633039f97ced75870c55ac402cb41728e3e62d2f0f8fe.jpg
Okay just checked, it did indeed arrive and is the correct model from the box. Really bummed to hear you received the wrong model..I still have Newegg and BHphoto on back order, so if one of them turns out to be shipping soon, you're welcome to have that one...
Oh no!! I was hoping we'd be saying cheers to getting it at the same time! I got a notification that mine arrived a day earlier than expected..haven't checked the package yet but will let you know...who knows, maybe they messed up a whole batch of orders... https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/78a4ad469f1e62c261af2fbd67351b543ff6ab823d34082a7a79a7b1ff60c9a9.png
It arrived at noon today, Monday, Dec 19, but there's a problem, Amazon apparently accidentally sent the 500GB model instead, so my wait continues for the replacement to arrive.
https://twitter.com/paulbraren/status/810909443391098880
Tracking now shows it's in nearby Massachusetts, but "Now expected Dec 18 - Dec 21"
Oh wow, did yours arrive? I got a notification that my order shipped on Dec 18th (Sunday)...with an arrival date of Dec 20th (Tuesday) with 1 day shipping (weird?)
But congrats, looks like it's finally happening!
Ah, cool! Maybe I'm missing something, but if you're not booting from it, any modern OS should see that NVMe as an SSD, a secondary drive, even if not PCIe 3.0 X4 full speed, more details at https://TinkerTry.com/how-to-boot-win10-from-samsung-950-pro-nvme-on-superserver
Yeah I'm in the US. I do have the PCIe adapter as well as both drives but no other systems that support NVMe. I'll contact you on the form regarding the RAM.
Wow, you are first! Are you in US? But sorry to hear that (RAM issue). It's a long shot, but do you happen to have another system to try 960 PRO/EVO as secondary storage for now, using an adapter such as one of these?
https://TinkerTry.com/pcie-to-m2-nvme-accessories-overview
If the RAM RMA issue isn't already sorted yet and happens to be from Wiredzone, please let me https://TinkerTry.com/contact and wiredzone@hotmail.com know and we will help out.
Got it delivered today already. In an interesting twist of events as of today I have both a 1TB 960 EVO and 1TB 960 PRO. How about a benchmarking article?
Of course I may not actually have any RAM today due to the RMA, considering I thought the RAM was the issue not Supermicro.
Any chance you have found some reference materials on this? There seems to be very little info/details out there, and I'd love to dive in...
Article updated, Amazon telling me my 1TB 960 EVO will ship Monday.
Mine shows shipping Monday, arriving Tuesday, see article updates and screenshots above. Curious, does yours still show as shipping this weekend?
Yeah, I see the same thing now. I guess those 17 got gobbled up quick. :) My Dec 15 order shows shipping today for arrival Tuesday but I paid for one day shipping so maybe it'll get here this weekend or Monday.
http://imgur.com/a/QHLJ2
EDIT: Just got email notification from Amazon that it has shipped and should arrive Sunday!
Interesting, here in Connecticut, USA, I took this screenshot moments ago, no stock/availability mention at all:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3786c95e47f23980507df6d858af8c2b9647b753572c7266c6ad5bdbada35053.png
and it looks exactly the same when not logged in:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/385e89ef491c2545e4ae01a24bf2a002413d9eff6e181548d0c35e3b8763ecd2.png
anyhow, my Dec 15 order shows status as shipping out Monday, for arrival Tuesday.
Sebastian was right! Amazon is showing 17 in stock right now.
http://imgur.com/a/kNB0t
That eBay pricing looks a bit prohibitive ;-)
Thanks for sharing your findings here! Also ordered my 1TB EVO from Amazon today for overnight, will believe it when I see it in my hands...
Nice find, thanks for sharing! I just ordered it and chose one-day shipping...I'm crossing my fingers that we could get really lucky and it would ship out tomorrow (a.k.a arrive Saturday). However, I did also find this item on eBay from someone local...I asked him some info and he said he is expecting to receive it Saturday. Listing shows up as $9,999 but my understanding is he will charge it at (or near?) MSRP once they are in stock. https://goo.gl/SukhUD
Just prodding various sources trying to get an idea of when they might actually be available...
It is a mess! But two hours ago (or so), things got better, see comment above:
https://tinkertry.com/samsung-960-pro-or-evo-might-be-backordered-into-2017#comment-3054132123
about Amazon
http://fave.co/2gKJ52j
Will only believe it when I see something in my hand!
One saga comes to an end, another only begins. :)
Nice find! (article updated). I'm assuming you meant Sat Dec 17 - Sun Dec 18th.
Two hours ago, it said "Temporarily out of stock" (as pictured)
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/df6612f712a3b7550729fe2848df3b70396fc9efe554104837f29e90fc0e200d.png
Amazon is shipping the 1TB Samsung 960 EVO this weekend Nov 17-18.
Well it looks like you got further than I did with the 960PRO (512GB) - I've been trying to get it to work with my X10SDV-TLN4F MB (Xeon D-1541) with no luck. Couldn't get ESXi 6.5 to see it at all, nor the Win 10 installer (desperate times). Have raised a ticket with Supermicro but don't expect to get very far.
Same here...pre-ordered at BHphoto and Newegg and no luck. I was originally given a launch date of Dec 8th from BHphoto on Monday of last week just like Paul. But this week the website says it's unavailable. I chatted with BHphoto customer service on December 12th and they said they have a new ETA of 12/28/2016. Oh no!!
On December 12th, I also saw Newegg had an ETA of December 13th so I ordered it. Well it still hasn't shipped and now their website shows it is out of stock. Their customer service does not seem to have an ETA.
What is going on? I'm trying to finish my liquid cooled PC...wondering if I should wait or use some kind of other hard drive in the mean time to get me by...
That's extremely helpful for you to let us know right here, given your thorough approach. I really appreciate it. See also the related tweet:
https://twitter.com/paulbraren/status/808885931143008257
I'm preordered at every major retailer as well with no luck. I wonder what's going on with Samsung.
Not I, Samsung sent a heads-up that my 1TB 960 EVO is still on backorder, with no ETAs given. Updating the article accordingly.
Has anyone had any luck getting the 960 EVO in America?
I suppose you saw this:
https://TinkerTry.com/samsung-960-pro-or-evo-might-be-backordered-into-2017#comment-3040549907
Unfortunately, I was unable to obtain a sample of the 960 PRO 2TB to test, so I won't be able to test this myself, and I'll need to research this further. I should have my 1TB 960 EVO this week, although a call to B&H today didn't reveal any new ship date ETA.
As for the SYS-E200-8D that I had on loan for a while, it's identical with all the other mini-ITX systems, same BIOS and IPMI, only the CPU core count and number of drives that can fit varies, see https://TinkerTry.com/compare
so whatever I discover on my SYS-5028D-TN4T should apply equally to any other X10 owner in the Mini-ITX form factor (perhaps not the SYS-E300-8D Flex-ATX with older BIOS)
I think the issues with the 960 is due to NVMe1.2, which the drive is supporting. I don't know whether it is backward compatible with NVMe 1.1.
What about support for 2 TB drives in e200-8d. In NVMe 1.1 I think the limit is 1TB – right?
and finally, the complete solution (just add storage, cables, and 2nd server) seen here: https://TinkerTry.com/articles/my-tinkertry-d-xeon-d-bundle-2-supermicro-superserver-bundle-2-of-joy
I'll have to detail my storage ideas at a later date. Are you thinking about 2.5" SSDs mixed with M.2 NVMe SSDs, or pure M.2 NVMe SSDs? The latter much pricier option is now possible, see:
https://TinkerTry.com/pcie-to-m2-nvme-accessories-overview
See also
https://TinkerTry.com/vmware-storage-and-availability-technical-documents#comment-3040976960
https://TinkerTry.com/vmware-storage-and-availability-technical-documents#see-also
and ROBO (Remote Office / Branch Office) mentions here:
https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/products/vsan/vmware-vsan-65-licensing-guide.pdf
Great, the mini-towers are by far the most versatile and the most quiet.
It will be likely I'll get a prototype built this winter, consisting of unsupported vSAN All Flash configuration, only recently having the funds to get my 2nd cluster node, more details to follow in a planned vSAN post
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3d8014270633a1dcbee2be47b37197c031d17bbeb2e5e5cd62a10243fb53dec4.png
Yes, I'm okay with fan noise, was hoping to use the 5028D-TN4T systems to build this lab with, I'm trying to make the lab somewhat future proof (5+ years) and will use 128gb ram in each host. Since it's a lab, it does not have to be supportable I just need the controller to work so the drives will show up I guess. Maybe a NVMe 960 1tb and a large capacity SATA if that would work?
Not sure whether to laugh, cry, cringe, or all the above. I do thank you Robert, for your post, and for joining me on the bleeding edge, in the end, I believe it will help move Supermicro forward. I'm continuing to report such stories of their support group's M.2 NVMe stance, and am glad to have a place to collect them here for my readers. At least we have release notes, a baby step in the right direction:
https://tinkertry.com/superserver-xeond-ipmi
https://tinkertry.com/superserver-xeond-bios
https://tinkertry.com/supermicro-superserver-bios-11c-and-ipmi-346-released
Will be interesting to see how my 960 EVO behaves, likely the same I'm guessing (controller is more like 960 PRO than 950 PRO).
Thanks for the kind words, and know that you are not alone! (many EMC and Dell visitors to my demo at VMworld). Besides the licensing hurtles, be sure to read about queue depth and other vSAN challenges here as well:
https://tinkertry.com/intel-nuc-compared-to-xeon-d-supermicro-superservers#comment-2888981140
I need to ask you some questions before I can try to answer:
1) is noise a concern (meaning, you ok with fast 1U fans?) see SYS-E200-8D at https://TinkerTry.com/compare
2) is having all components on the stringent vSAN list a concern, or you just want something that works, albeit unsupported?
More vSAN chatter:
https://twitter.com/search?q=vsan%20paulbraren&src=typd
and these turned out to not make it on to vSAN compatiblity list:
https://twitter.com/paulbraren/status/771887615872274433
despite hopes:
https://tinkertry.com/vmworld-2016-interviews#micron
Let's end with some fun, vCSA became VCSA, and now VSAN became vSAN, sigh:
https://twitter.com/emad_younis/status/790933877619429376
Paul, Love what you have done here for the home lab community especially for us VMware fanboys. What are the chances of you putting together a VMware HCL bundle for VSAN on the SuperMicros? I'm looking to get three boxes for an updated lab and VSAN is almost critical. I'm a virtualization consultant and my time is very limited, I really need an almost turn-key lab and you've provided that with your bundles. Thanks again.
I pre-ordered my one here in Austria at the end of Oct. because i thought - "950(PRO) flawlessly tested by tinkertry ... What should go wrong?" ;-) - I should have known better from my job in IT where i constantly preach to customers what the hell drove them to be an "early adopter" with a cutting edge device no one has now ? ;-) - btw. - I can confirm SR-IOV with 2k16 and HV-Set-Switch too - Nice! - I´d love to have another box with 2x10GE to talk to ... ;-)
Just for your ref. - Ken Huang of SM assigned Case-# SM1611252134 ... sent him the info on 29.11. - No reply since then (guess he can´t confirm without a 960PRO either), but for now i can live with my workaround as long as i don´t have to change any BIOS-Setting remotely ... ;-)
cheers,
Robert
Congrats on getting yours so early!
Wow, your story, and fix, is odd, and something I'll be reporting and tracking carefully, of course. I'm so sorry I didn't have an answer for you on your original post. I've gone ahead and referenced this new information from you over in your other thread:
https://TinkerTry.com/superserver-xeond-bios#comment-3020310645
just trying to help as many folks out as possible with your work here. At some point, I might want to write separately about this, as I gain a better understanding of what's going on.
Will also be interesting to see how my Samsung 960 EVO (1TB) behaves, expected this Friday (I'll be in MN https://TinkerTry.com/three-more-xeon-d-superserver-demos-in-4q2016) or Monday, so given I don't also have a 960 PRO, your details are that much more valuable.
Hi Paul,
I recently posted some feedback on my shiny new 960PRO (512GB) i installed in my SYS-5028D-TN4T. I don´t know if the Module is to blame, or the latest 1.1c-BIOS, but I found out that my problem described here (https://tinkertry.com/superserver-xeond-bios#comment-3020310645) is actually some Firmware-related issue. I can confirm that ANY change in the BIOS using Save-and-Exit/Reboot leads to the 960PRO being unable to boot or showing up at all if OS is booted from SATA (W2k16). The only action to get it going again is to UNPLUG the power (simply Powering off via BMC does NOT help) ... Opened a ticket with Supermicro and provided update to engineer - Simply got feedback in the first place that the module is not on the "officially supported"-List. Anyway - without changing any setting in BIOS everything works flawlessly and speed is as expected from 960PRO.
cheers,
Robert
David
Hi Paul,
I got the same problem as Robert that my 512G 960 Pro SSD installed in ASUS Strix X99. It boots and works fine during initial power on. However, the SSD will be disappeared when I reboot the PC including Windows reboot or BIOS save/exit. The only solution is power off the PC and power on again.