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Technical rules for drives

Understanding the technical rules for drives helps you correctly install and configure drives in the system.

Drive installation rules​

The following rules for drives provide information that you must consider when you install a drive.

General rules​

  1. The drive bays are numbered to indicate the installation slot (starting from number “0”). Follow the installation rules when you install a drive. See Front view for more details.

  2. The drives in a single RAID array must be of the same type (as in hard disk drives, solid-state drives, and so on), same size, and same capacity.

Mixing rules​

  1. You can use drives from different vendors.

  2. You can mix drives of different types and different capacities in one system, but not in one RAID array. And when you deploy a drive mix, install drives of lower capacity first.

  3. You can install a 2.5-inch solid-state/SAS/SATA drive in a 3.5-inch hard disk drive bay.

  4. Mixing EDSFF, U.2 or U.3 drives in one RAID array is not supported.

  5. M.2 and 7mm drives are not supported at the same time.

  6. ThinkSystem M.2 SATA/x4 NVMe 2-Bay Enablement Kit cannot be supported on a 3.5'' chassis.

  7. ThinkSystem M.2 RAID B540i-2i SATA/NVMe Enablement Kit cannot be supported with other M.2 kits at the same time.

Special notes​

  1. VMware ESXi does not support:

    • ThinkSystem 2.5 U.3 6500 ION 30.72TB Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 4.0 x4 HS SSD

    • ThinkSystem 2.5" U.2 P5336 7.68TB Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 4.0 x4 HS SSD

    • ThinkSystem 2.5" U.2 P5336 15.36TB Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 4.0 x4 HS SSD

    • ThinkSystem 2.5" U.2 P5336 30.72TB Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 4.0 x4 HS SSD

    • ThinkSystem 2.5" U.2 P5336 61.44TB Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 4.0 x4 HS SSD