Adding 12gb/s SAS and Drive Cage to an Older Quanta Server

[EnduringGuerila]

This isn't really a 'guide' but more 'how I did it.'

Hardware: PCPartPicker
For starters, I'm working on a Quanta S210-X22RQ 2U LGA2011 (some fellow strugglers).
Mine came with 2 SAS controllers,
the LSI MegaRAID SAS 9261-8i 6gb/s for the front bays
and LSI 2008 mezzanine 6gb/s (DA0S2GTH8B0) (no battery)
I replaced this with the newer LSI 3108 mezzanine 12gb/s ( Quanta DAS2BTH7CB0 $11) (has battery)
Luckily the bracket that held the 2008 card nicely fit the 3108 card so I didn't have to design and 3D print a holder.

From everything I read, the rear backplane that came with (DAS2RHD64A0) my server COULD support 12gb/s since the trays had separate sata cables for each drive. The board just seemed to be supplying power to the drives. Well that didn't work, the controller wouldn't recognize any drives even though the backplane led shown bright for the populated tray.

I did confirm the controller was working by hooking an ssd up directly to the sata cable with an external psu, the ssd showed up. During some of the initial tests, I did fry the original backplane and ordered a new one. The original backplane uses a (I assume non-standard) 4 pin with 12v, 5v, 3.3v, and gnd.



Second drive cage!
Around the same time, I had the idea to add a second drive cage to the server so we could have 4 rear 2.5" drives

Lazy...
If I wanted to stick with 6gb/s, these backplanes with one upside down and the cable barely reaching would have worked, but it didn't feel right settling for this lazy route, especially since I already had a working 12gb/s raid card.


So this brings us to the 'situation.'
I knew the Quanta backplane (3TS2BSB0010) from the D51B-2U would work with the raid card since the raid card was originally from that server,
but this had a weird power port I didn't really want to deal with, plus these backplanes are $30 each without cage, $40 with cage at the time of writing and I didn't want to spend that much.



I found a couple supermicro backplanes,
one may or may not be capable of 12gb/s, it did have the same style 4 pin power connector but I don't have any easy way of finding out what voltages it wants. That's how I fried my first backplane, I tried to use a secondary PCU and the only 4 pin cable I had was a CPU power cable, which I believe is just multiple 12v lines and ground.


The other, the Supermicro BPN-SAS3-826TQ-B2B, is 12gb/s but had molex power and I still don't know if my raid card would support it, and they were $25 each without cage.

 

[EnduringGuerila]

Proposed Solution:
Just make my own custom cables and don't use a backplane. I don't plan on removing the drives often, and this seems to be the cheapest way to definitely get the drives working at 12gb/s...


Current Pinout:
The whole server has very little power available. These two random 4 pins come

Molex – Mayank Joneja

Posts about Molex written by mayankjoneja

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So the main thing is the 4 pin molex pinout at the top right, but you can also see the typical ATX/PCIe 4-pin pinout is just gnd gnd 12v 12v, not what we have in the server!


Fabricobble:
Total $36.82
$9 Female ATX 4 Pin to 8 Pin Power Adapter (10 pack amazon)
$7 Molex Y-Splitters (2 pack amazon)
$18 Mini-SAS HD SFF-8643 to 29-Pin SAS SFF-8482, with Molex 4Pin Power (amazon)




The simple idea is to make an adapter cable from the female 4-pin end, to female molex, which can then plug into the breakout sas cable that has molex power input.


if... only IF this gets annoying:
I could try the Supermicro BPN-SAS3-826TQ-B2B backplanes that also have molex power or something similar, and just not use the breakout sas cable...

 

[EnduringGuerila]

All the cables arrived!



Chopped off the ATX 8-pin ends and molex splitters


yanked out the 3.3v wires from the ATX 4-pin side since they weren't needed.


Soldered the wires together. I opted to combine them since the ATX 4-pin side wires were quite small.


The marine grade heat-shrink is unnecessary but that's what I have the most of laying around.


Hooked up 4 cheap old SAS drives to make sure no ~Magic Smoke~ was summoned


All 4 drives showed up! It took a bit to get them all into JBOD, honestly this interface is pretty shitty... but that's not the point of this thread.


Final Thoughts:
My only concerns at the moment are that I'm not getting 5v anymore with all 4 drives connected, it's sitting at 4.8v with the drives idling.
12.2v on the yellow wires and grounds seemed fine too.

The cables are all a bit too long, especially the Mini-SAS cables. Those were the cheapest ones I saw on amazon with 1-2 day shipping. 0.75 Meter long... even the 0.5m which seemed more common would have been too much.

The molex connectors on both ends are cheap shit and pretty difficult to get the pins lined up to connect them, but they're carrying power just fine for now.

 

[EnduringGuerila]

Adding a second 2-tray drive cage to the Quanta S210-X22RQ 2U

One simple option,
just glue or double sided foam tape another cage next to the first upside down and the spare power cable will reach.
These backplanes do seem to be limited to 6gb/s so I chose not to used them (hence the first 3 posts on this post)

another rear backplane with cage and trays [DAS2RHD64A0]
(this is the seller I bought from and they were actually quite nice. They accepted my first offer for $18, and when I told them I wanted to buy another backplane but didn't need the cage, they accepted $10 but gave me the cage with trays anyway... this was before I realized I couldn't get the backplane to work with the 12gb/s sas card)


My slightly more professional install:
I plan on putting mine right side up, but tapping holes to screw it down wouldn't be easy. The metal between the the cage and the PSUs is quite thin and I don't have the special riv-nuts Quanta used.


So I hopped in Fusion360 and modeled some spacer/feet!


3D printed and got them fitting quite nicely with v3.
had to print them with a brim so they wouldn't lift off the build plate during the print.

I pressed in the m3 nuts I had from a kit I bought for random 3D printing projects...
I have a ton of various spare PC screws and many of them are m3 fine thread that fit these nuts.
(didn't take the time to nicely remove all the brim since it won't hurt anything, considered leaving them for more epoxy surface area)

I went ahead and screwed the feet on to make it easy to epoxy them in the right spot on the case.


(Loctite Epoxy for Metal/Concrete, idk if it was just on the shelf for too many years but this stuff would not come out of the tube)


I only let the epoxy dry for 10-15 min since it said it dried hard in 20 min.
While applying downward pressure, I carefully unscrewed the screws to make sure they didn't get glued down into the nuts.
Then, after maybe 30 min I pulled the cage leaving the spacer/feet/things!

 

[EnduringGuerila]

updated post 3 with the cables completed and working
not sure if I'll have time to finish properly mounting the 2nd drive cage today.

 

[EnduringGuerila]

Post 4 updated and (this part of the) project complete!

Let me know if anyone else wants to buy some 3D printed feet from me.
I could make another version that just has a slightly smaller plastic hole that can be screwed into directly without any M3 nuts.
Then course or fine thread screws would work.
I could fit them in a standard envelope and mail them for $0.60 to the USA or share the files for anyone else that has a 3D printer.

 

[owenthewizard]

I could fit them in a standard envelope and mail them for $0.60 to the USA or share the files for anyone else that has a 3D printer.

Just FYI, you can't mail anything in a standard envelope that isn't flat as it's non-machinable. They'll send it back (likely crushed by the machine). Ask me how I know... First Class Package (now Ground Advantage) is your best bet but it will be >= $4 iirc.

 

[owenthewizard]

Not sure why but my backplane doesn't seem to work with any SAS (DA0S2GTH8B0, LSI SAS2008, onboard SAS/SCU ports). It works with the onboard SATA ports.

Edit: I just read through your posts again, are you saying the backplane is the issue? It only works with SATA?

 

[Fritz]

The only time I ever use 12g is when I'm transferring a lot of data that would take over a day. I fire up my 12G switch as needed because it uses a google of electricity and has 2 1K PSU's. For most things 6G works just fine. But I can appreciate your efforts and wish you success.

 

[laos12333]

Nice work!

 

[EnduringGuerila]

Not sure why I wasn't being notified of replies on this thread...

I'll updated the original post but here is my 'final' server parts list: PCPartPicker

Just FYI, you can't mail anything in a standard envelope that isn't flat as it's non-machinable. They'll send it back (likely crushed by the machine). Ask me how I know... First Class Package (now Ground Advantage) is your best bet but it will be >= $4 iirc.

I've mailed a lot of random stuff over the years in a standard envelope with stamp and haven't had issues. One friend mailed like 30 nickles to another friend and when the nickles ripped the envelope apart, the mailmen put them in a ziplock bag and wrote an apology letter for losing a couple! So anyway, yes, I can mail them and doubt it'd be an issue within the USA.

Not sure why but my backplane doesn't seem to work with any SAS (DA0S2GTH8B0, LSI SAS2008, onboard SAS/SCU ports). It works with the onboard SATA ports.
Edit: I just read through your posts again, are you saying the backplane is the issue? It only works with SATA?

The original backplane I had worked fine for 6gb/s SAS and SATA on the original LSI 2008 mezzanine card, but the LSI 3108 mezzanine 12gb/s card couldn't read anything connected to the old backplanes, and I assume the tri-mode HBA couldn't either.

The only time I ever use 12g is when I'm transferring a lot of data that would take over a day. I fire up my 12G switch as needed because it uses a google of electricity and has 2 1K PSU's. For most things 6G works just fine. But I can appreciate your efforts and wish you success.

I ran into issues with the two 8tb U.2 NVMe SSDs I bought which and ended up not liking the 12gbps mezzanine card and I am using a "LSI 9400-8I Tri-Mode 12G SAS / SATA PCIe HBA."

All the cables and drive trays above worked great. The 12gb/s mezzanine card works fine for 6-12gb/s drives, I only have one 6gb/s 2tb ssd utilizing it though...

 

[Fritz]

I once bought a roll of pennies on eBay. The seller shipped them in an envelope and all I got was an envelope with a hole in it. Seller claimed fraud, I uploaded a pic of the envelope and ebay sided with me and gave me my money back.

Bottom line, the seller is responsible for properly packaging an item. If he/she doesn't then they lose.

I also received an AMD CPU that had bent pins due to the seller putting it in a baggie then in an envelope. I have no idea what he was thinking, he he really believe it would arrive without bent pins?