Users Guide

Table Of Contents
with a high-speed PCIe 2.0 or PCIe 3.0 compliant interface. iDRAC 2.20.20.20 and later versions support Half-Height Half-
Length (HHHL) PCIe SSD cards on Dells 13th generation of PowerEdge rack and tower servers and Dell PowerEdge R920
servers. The HHHL SSD card can be directly plugged in to the PCI slot in the servers that do not have PCIe SSD supported
backplanes. You can also use these cards on servers with supported backplanes.
Using iDRAC interfaces, you can view and configure NVMe PCIe SSDs.
The key features of PCIe SSD are:
Hot plug capability
High-performance device
The PCIe SSD subsystem consists of the Backplane, PCIe Extender card which is attached to the backplane of the system and
provides PCIe connectivity for up to four or eight PCIe SSDs at the front of the chassis and the PCIe SSDs.
You can perform the following operations for PCIe SSDs:
Inventory and remotely monitor the health of PCIe SSDs in the server
Prepare to remove the PCIe SSD
Securely erase the data
Blink or unblink the device LED
You can perform the following operations for HHHL SSDs:
Inventory and real-time monitoring of the HHHL SSD in the server
Drive status reporting such as Online, Failed, and Offline
Failed card reporting and logging in iDRAC and OMSS
Securely erasing the data and removing the card
TTY logs reporting
NOTE:
Hot plug capability, prepare to remove, and blink or unblink the device LED is not applicable for HHHL PCIe SSD
devices.
Related concepts
Inventorying and monitoring PCIe SSDs on page 212
Preparing to remove PCIe SSD on page 213
Erasing PCIe SSD device data on page 214
Inventorying and monitoring PCIe SSDs
The following inventory and monitoring information is available for PCIe SSDs:
Hardware information:
PCIe SSD Extender card
PCIe SSD Backplane
If the system has a dedicated PCIe backplane, two FQDDs are displayed. One FQDD is for regular drives and the other is
for SSDs. If the backplane is shared (universal), only one FQDD is displayed.
Software inventory includes only the firmware version for the PCIe SSD.
Inventorying and monitoring PCIe SSDs using web interface
To inventory and monitor PCIe SSD devices, in the iDRAC web interface, go to Overview > Storage > Physical Disks. The
Properties page is displayed. For PCIe SSDs, the Name column displays PCIe SSD. Expand to view the properties.
Inventorying and monitoring PCIe SSDs using RACADM
Use the racadm storage get controllers:<PcieSSD controller FQDD> command to inventory and monitor PCIe
SSDs.
To view all PCIe SSD drives:
racadm storage get pdisks
212
Managing storage devices