Summary

Our latest generation HW RAID BOSS solution (BOSS-N1) incorporates NVMe Enterprise class M.2 NVMe SSDs. It includes important RAS features such as rear or front facing drives on our new rack servers and full hot-plug support, so a server does not need to be taken offline in case of an SSD failure. When operating a RAID 1 mirror, a surprise removal and addition of a new SSD automatically kicks off a rebuild on the new RAID 1 member SSD that was added, so there is no need to halt server operations.

Available on the newest generation of PowerEdge systems, BOSS-N1 provides a robust, redundant, low-cost solution for boot optimization.

Introduction

The Boot Optimized Storage Solution (BOSS-N1) provides key, generational feature improvements to the highly popular BOSS subsystem and its existing value proposition. It incorporates an NVMe interface to the M.2 SSDs to ensure high performance and the latest technology. BOSS was originally designed to provide a highly reliable, cost-effective solution for separating operating system boot drives from data drives on server-internal storage. Many customers, particularly those in the Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) arena and those implementing Software Defined Storage (SDS), require separating their OS drives from data drives. They also require hardware RAID mirroring (RAID 1) for their OS drives. The main motivation for this is to create a server configuration optimized for application data. Providing a separate, redundant disk solution for the OS enables a more robust and optimized compute platform.

Figure 1.  Installing the BOSS-N1 monolithic controller module

The Boot Optimized Storage Solution (BOSS-N1) is a simple, highly reliable and cost-effective solution to meet the requirements of our customers. The NVMe M.2 devices offer similar performance as 2.5” SSDs and support rear or front facing drive accessibility with full hot-plug support on monolithic platforms and includes surprise removal. Our design frees up and maximizes available drive slots for data requirements.

BOSS-N1 provides a secure way of updating the controller firmware

• Each of the firmware components is authenticated before being stored to firmware slot
• Authentication requires the use of public and private asymmetric key pair. This protected key pair is uniquely generated for Dell through a hardware security module (HSM) server.
• BOSS-N1 firmware updates can be updated using DUP from both In-band (Operating System) and Out-of-band (iDRAC) interfaces

You can manage BOSS-N1 with standard well-known management tools such as iDRAC, OpenManage Systems Administrator (OMSA), and the BOSS-N1 Command Line Interface (CLI).

BOSS-N1 hardware components

Figure 2.  BOSS-N1 monolithic card

Figure 3.  BOSS-N1 modular

Key features of BOSS-N1:

• Supports one (1) or two (2) 80 mm M.2 Enterprise Class NVMe SSDs
• M.2 devices are read-intensive (1 DWPD) with 480GB or 960GB capacity
• Fixed function hardware RAID 1 (mirroring) or single drive RAID 0
• Rear or front facing module for quick and easy accessibility to the M.2 SSDs on monolithic platforms
• Full hot-plug support on monolithic platforms
• M.2 drive LED functionality on monolithic platforms 
• Managing BOSS-N1 is accomplished with standard, well-known management tools such as iDRAC, OpenManage Systems Administrator (OMSA), and the BOSS-N1 Command Line Interface (CLI)

BOSS-N1 supported operating systems

Windows Servers

• Windows Server 2019
• Windows Server 2022

Linux

• RHEL 8.6
• SLES 15 SP4
• Ubuntu 20.04.4

VMware

• ESXi 7.0 U3
• ESXi 8.0

References

• For more information about BOSS-N1, see the BOSS-N1 User’s Guide.
• For more information about iDRAC, such as the iDRAC User’s Guide and the iDRAC Release Notes, see the Dell Support site.
• For more information about OpenManage Server Administrator, see the OMSA 9.5 User’s Guide.