Hi all, so this is something super duper spectacularly niche that probably doesn't exist but I wanted to check to see if anyone knows of an oddball solution off the shelf for this.
For my 1u storage server, because of budget limits (aka being broke) I wasn't able to get the server that supported u.2 nvme SSD's in the front, I had to settle for one that has 2.5" sas spots.
I would like however, if possible to add nvme into this server, I'm not sure if it would helpthe awful performance issues I'm fighting with unraid, likely not, but it would still be nice for vm's and such.
The motherboard has an unpopulated nvme header but I doubt that is even wired up properly since it's not an equipped option, but there is in fact an ocp mezzanine connector that's free, as well as some sort of Quanta specific (I think) pcie riser with 8 lanes available.
So, I was hoping there is an off the shelf way to take this mezzanine connector or the other slot and convert it either directly to m.2 nvme, or more likely a pcie slot to use a carrier card. I searched quite a lot but drew up nothing, I did try to contact Quanta about this but didn't hear back, maybe worth another shot.
I also thought that the board was OEM'd by supermicro so I got in touch with them but it turned out not to be the case.
I did start digging into the OCP mezzanine design specification documents to start looking at pinouts, as it should in theory just be a pin to pin re-map and some voltage regulation to get working, nothing terribly difficult board design wise but the pinouts weren't as clear as I was hoping from my first glance.
There are cheap 10g network cards that are actually an ocp mezzanine card in a pcie carrier, so the opposite of what I need, that I made a video on and I could always pull one of those out of one of my servers to reverse engineer.
Somewhat low quality images, I can grab full res copies when I get home:
The riser slot seems to be identical to the one used for the lsi sas controller, but that is the same connector on the other side of the riser as well, it doesn't map to a more standard pcie style to try and design an adapter based on that.
For my 1u storage server, because of budget limits (aka being broke) I wasn't able to get the server that supported u.2 nvme SSD's in the front, I had to settle for one that has 2.5" sas spots.
I would like however, if possible to add nvme into this server, I'm not sure if it would helpthe awful performance issues I'm fighting with unraid, likely not, but it would still be nice for vm's and such.
The motherboard has an unpopulated nvme header but I doubt that is even wired up properly since it's not an equipped option, but there is in fact an ocp mezzanine connector that's free, as well as some sort of Quanta specific (I think) pcie riser with 8 lanes available.
So, I was hoping there is an off the shelf way to take this mezzanine connector or the other slot and convert it either directly to m.2 nvme, or more likely a pcie slot to use a carrier card. I searched quite a lot but drew up nothing, I did try to contact Quanta about this but didn't hear back, maybe worth another shot.
I also thought that the board was OEM'd by supermicro so I got in touch with them but it turned out not to be the case.
I did start digging into the OCP mezzanine design specification documents to start looking at pinouts, as it should in theory just be a pin to pin re-map and some voltage regulation to get working, nothing terribly difficult board design wise but the pinouts weren't as clear as I was hoping from my first glance.
There are cheap 10g network cards that are actually an ocp mezzanine card in a pcie carrier, so the opposite of what I need, that I made a video on and I could always pull one of those out of one of my servers to reverse engineer.
Somewhat low quality images, I can grab full res copies when I get home:
The riser slot seems to be identical to the one used for the lsi sas controller, but that is the same connector on the other side of the riser as well, it doesn't map to a more standard pcie style to try and design an adapter based on that.
That internal 6gbps sas connector would be in the way too. (though I wouldn't be entirely opposed to making it... go away)