How do you get DC P3600 drives to boot in a R2208WTTYC1 system when installing Windows 2012 R2?

[JCart7]

I purchased a R2208WTTYC1, A2U44X25NVMEDK NVMe kit, 2 – E5-2697 CPUs, 256 GB ram and 3 – DC P3600 SSDPE2ME020T401 NVMe drives. When installing Windows 2012 R2, it will see the drives but will not install because it says drives are not bootable in bois. Does anyone know a change in the bois that needs to be made to be able to boot from these drives? Or do I need another component such as a RS3 raid module to get these drives to be bootable? I have a ticket number with Intel Tech support but it has been a week with no help from them.

[jbenavides]

Hello Jcarton,

Booting from the Intel® SSD DC P3600 series and other NVMe* PCIe* Intel® SSD's requires additional BIOS configuration. The changes may include CSM, UEFI and Boot configuration settings. In addition to proper UEFI BIOS configuration, you will need a uEFI install media, as well as loading the https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/23929/Intel-Solid-State-Drive-Data-Center-Family-for-PCIe-... Intel® Solid-State Drive Data Center Family for PCIe Drivers during the Windows* Installation process.

The focus of this forum in on the SSD itself, please review this information and let us know if you require a server specialist so we can forward this thread appropriately.

For your reference, here is a document that explains the changes required and the OS installation process, using different desktop motherboards:

http://www.intel.com/support/ssdc/hpssd/sb/CS-035481.htm Intel® High Performance Solid-State Drives — Booting an NVMe* PCI Express* Solid State Drive

If the drive is being used as a secondary drive, the process will be different, you can find more information about it in this guide:

http://downloadmirror.intel.com/23929/eng/Intel%20SSD%20Data%20Center%20Family%20for%20PCIe%20Instal... http://downloadmirror.intel.com/23929/eng/Intel%20SSD%20Data%20Center%20Family%20for%20PCIe%20Instal...…

Please consider that the 8x2.5" Drive Combo SAS / PCIe* SFF(NVMe) SSD Backplane Accessory Kit A2U44X25NVMED uses an add-in-card, backplane, riser board supported in Riser Slot # 2, and also requires server updates to operate. For more information, please check the following documentation:

Intel® Server Board S2600WT Product Family Configuration Guide, section 5.2, pages 55-58

http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/intel_s2600wt_product_family_config_guide_2... http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/intel_s2600wt_product_family_config_guide_2...

Intel® Server System R2000WT Product Family TPS, section 6.6.5, pages 69-76

http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/intel_server_system_r2000wt_tps_r1_03.pdf http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/intel_server_system_r2000wt_tps_r1_03.pdf