One of our local workstations SSD is severely slow. I can't seem to find much resources on whether or not the latest BIOS supports booting Windows Server from a PCIe SSD. If it doesn't, is there a way to force it to boot — like grub on a USB drive or something?
Windows – Booting from PCIe SSD on Dell T3600
pci-expressssdwindows
Best Answer
Don't waste your SATA or SAS port for boot SSD! Boot from USB stick and keep expansion ports for capacity & performance tiers!
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/how-to-create-bootable-windows-server-2016-usb-thumb-drive-for-installing-os
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/create-an-esxi-6-5-installation-usb-under-two-minutes
P.S. You might want to boot ESXi and Linux from mirrored SD cards if you have such an equipment on-board, but don't do that with Hyper-V or Windows Server: they will burn replacement cells very soon.