Is it possible to install OMV to an M.2 PCIe SSD and run it from this SSD?

Zitat von Gulliver

I have an unused M.2 slot

Which can hold both PCIe/NVMe SSDs but also provides SATA. In case it's not only about burning money for no reason and you really believe you need an SSD I would go with the smallest/slowest/cheapest M.2 SATA SSD from either Crucial, Intel, Samsung or Transcend (since those all have temperature and 'wear out indicator' availables via SMART) or if you are sure your board can boot a Debian 8 or 9 via NVMe then burn more money and go with a NVMe SSD (please be aware that you should monitor the temperature and prepare heatsinks or even a fan if you choose a really performant one).

OMV's own requirements for a 'boot drive' are almost none so it's a waste of resources anyway

Zitat von Gulliver

...if I would know this, I wouldn't have started this post, right?

Well, you're maybe asking in the wrong place then. OMV doesn't boot (that's the underlying kernel/bootloader Debian relies on) and has only indirect hardware requirements. So the question is whether 'your board can boot a Debian 8 or 9 via NVMe'. Maybe someone knows here.

Zitat von Gulliver

heat development (negligible in a simple home server)

Hmm.... I found it a bit scary to install recently an M.2 SSD that started to cook itself at 80°C with light loads. Now it's serving somewhere else with huge heatsinks applies and some ventilation and remains below 50°C in idle (still waiting for a firmware update that corrects heat development)

Zitat von Gulliver

I take it you don't have the answers to my questions, right?

Obviously. Though I had some hope that you start to understand that your question is not related to OMV at all but only deals with

• your board's BIOS/UEFI implementation
• bootloader stuff (GRUB, systemd-boot, whatever you want to use)
• maybe even kernel stuff (NVMe support is there since quite a long time but you never know)

And I only answered to get the OMV part right: No SSD needed, especially not a fast one. OMV's flashmemory plugin combined with an USB thumb drive of appropriate size (the larger the better to reduce wear out) flashed with Etcher and tested with either F3 or H2testw prior to usage is perfectly fine. I prefer USB3 products connected to USB2 ports for these use cases (same with ESXi). Usually those USB2 ports are on every mainboard on pin headers...

Yes, debian 8.9 and debian 9 can run on NVME SSD

read this:
http://www.poweredbyjeff.com/2…750-SSD-in-Debian-Jessie/

and this:
Install OMV3 on Debian Jessie
OMV 3 on UEFI

Install debian on nvme and then OMV. Obvius difference between sata and nvme is in disk names(
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 238.5 GiB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors on one of my machines). Probably you need to configure EFI for it(i needed to be configured for mine)

No really,those are Lenovo Workstations with a lot of fans for a workstation.

Also forgot to mention, smartctl and HDSentinel are not detecting them, and lm-sensors also(atleast for me).

Just noticed this thread.
Gulliver,
I'm running OMV3 on an NVME drive. It would not install directly using the OMV iso. I had to install debian first, then OMV3 on top of debian which seems to work just fine. Like Ness mentioned smartctl doesn't work on the nvme drive - if anyone knows how I can fix that please let me know!

Zitat von jollyrogr

Like Ness mentioned smartctl doesn't work on the nvme drive

Nice! So there's really no difference to an USB thumb drive

Zitat von tkaiser

Nice! So there's really no difference to an USB thumb drive

I think that's a bit extreme. Smartctl is a Linux issue, not NVME.

Zitat von jollyrogr

Smartctl is a Linux issue, not NVME

Huh? 'Everything outdated like hell' is a Debian issue

'Smartmontools supports NVMe starting from version 6.5' (and I found building smartmontools from source pretty straight-forward)

Anyway, I'm always surprised that technology is chosen in an area where there's no advantages at all but only disadvantages. NVMe SSDs are great as ZFS/ZIL cache devices for example but as OMV system drive? There's no performance gain while using the flashmemory plugin (with an hourly cronjob syncing changes back to disk) is still a good idea. And when there's not even SMART available then there are really only disadvantages (more complex installation and maybe hassles in case the system has to be set up from scratch / desaster recovery).

I'll have to check...but I don't think smartctl is working on my Arch box nvme either... Current version there is 6.6-1

I do see your point, but if I'm already running the nvme, no reason to switch it up now, right? From my perspective, OMV is pretty simple to setup, so if I had to redo the box from scratch, that's not a scary proposition. I can see where using USB drives would make it super simple to create system drive backups and swap drives if there was a problem.

Maybe we need to compile smartctl with nvme flag? I'll look into it tomorrow.