Intel® Server System R1000WF Product Family Technical Product Specification 1.2 (lastest at the moment) ( Technical Specifications for the Intel® Server Board and Intel®... ) provides inconsistent informartion on SATA and NMVe drives installed on the backplane.
In 5.3 3rd paragraph reads:
The 8x2.5” drive combo backplane has support for different drive configurations including SAS or SATA only,
NVMe only, or a combination of both SAS and NVMe. Mixing of SATA and SAS devices within a common hot
swap backplane is not supported. Hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid state srives (SSDs) can be supported
within a common backplane.
From that one can infer that SATA + NMVe is not supported.
(By the way what does "not supported" mean? It will not work at all or it will work but Intel provides not assitance in solving problems with this configuration?)
But later in 5.3 5th paragraph reads:
The backplane and backplane management features can support drives installed in any order when
populating mixed SATA/NVMe or SAS/NVMe drive configurations. However, when mixing NVMe and
SATA/SAS within a common backplane, Intel recommends drive types be populated together and not in an
intermixed order. ...
Now this paragraph says that combination of SATA/NVMe drives is supported.
So what is the actual status of mixing SATA and NVMe drives on a single backplane?
P.S. These inconsistencies continue throughout 6.4:
6.4.4.1
* Combining an NVMe drive with a SAS/SATA drive within a defined drive pair is not supported.
o Example: With an NVMe drive installed to drive connector 0, drive connector 1 cannot be
populated with a SAS/SATA drive. The same rule applies to all other drive pairs on the
backplane.
From that one can assume that SATA drive can be populated alongside with NVMe provided that it is in different drive pair?
Whereas Figure 51 shows only SAS as a possible variant.
6.4.4.2
The same...
With best regards,
Sergei.