10GbE all-NVMe NAS: ASUS' Flashstor Pro (FS6712X)

[Aqualung]

In the market for a 10GbE all-NVMe NAS. I have been giving ASUS' FS6712X a long hard look. My main concern: how can the N5105 possibly handle all that??? The N5105 only has 8 PCIe 3.x lanes: how could that accommodate 12 NVMes + one 10GbE (among many others)?

 

[Digilog]

In the market for a 10GbE all-NVMe NAS. I have been giving ASUS' FS6712X a long hard look. My main concern: how can the N5105 possibly handle all that??? The N5105 only has 8 PCIe 3.x lanes: how could that accommodate 12 NVMes + one 10GbE (among many others)?

4 lanes for the 10GBe and 4 lanes for the NVme with a 12 port matrix switch controller sharing the pcie lanes. Of course a lot of the cheaper multi NVme PCIe cards work this way. They call this technology "raid on chip". Microchip semiconductor calls this "SmartROC".

What gets me puzzled about modern computer hardware is the use of an outdated bus technology being deployed (PCIe 3.0) and perpetuated.