Dell R720 replacement SAS3008 card has SFF 8643 female and need SFF 8087 female to connect

[antonical]

Hello,

My first post here so go easy.

We are looking to upgrade a Dell R720 server to ESXI 8 but need to change the LSI 9211-8i to a SAS3008 card to be supported. The backplane has SFF 8087 cables with male connectors that plug into the 9211-8i SFF8087 female ports.

The new SAS3008 cards have the newer mini sas 8643 female plugs so we need some kind of adaptor to convert the backplane cables to SFF 8643.

Struggling to find anything. Replacing the whole backplane is a non-starter.

Can anyone advise please how to solve this. The cards we are looking at currently are DELL HBA 330 or DELL 330 cards.

Cheers
Spart

 

[oneplane]

Considering you're already on the 'modify and DIY to keep going'-track, wouldn't it be easier to just pass the existing card through to a storage VM (i.e. with ZFS) and re-export them as stores to ESX?

 

[antonical]

Hmm, I am on that track but not sure that would be easier

We use the card to support multiple VM's some with passthrough drives some not. This is not a storage host but a general purpose host.

I can see there are SFF8643 to SFF8087 male cables but can't seem to find any SFF8643 male to SFF8087 female just surprised this is not more widely needed. But this is the computer industry so more e-waste generation!

Thanks for the suggestion but not going down the ZFS route on this server.

Cheers
Spart

 

[oneplane]

Perhaps a SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 Female to Female Adapter/Coupler combined with a Internal Mini SAS SFF-8087 to Mini SAS SFF-8643 HD High Density Data 50cm Cable | eBay to make a Frankenstein that does what you need?

As for the Data-VM (regardless of the ZFS), I was more thinking about using it as an adapter to make it irrelevant what vmware says about support:

┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                                               │
│                                                                               │
│                                                                               │
│         ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐       │
│         │                                                             │       │
│         │      ┌────────┐   ┌────────┐  ┌────────┐  ┌────────┐        │       │
│         │      │        │   │        │  │        │  │        │        │       │
│         │      │  vm    │   │   vm   │  │  vm    │  │  vm    │        │       │
│         │      │        │   │        │  │        │  │        │        │       │
│         │      └────▲───┘   └────▲───┘  └───▲────┘  └───▲────┘        │       │
│         │           │            │          │           │             │       │
│         │           └────────────┴──────────┴───────┬───┘             │       │
│         │                                           │        ESXi     │       │
│         │                                           │                 │       │
│         │   ┌───────────────────────┐     ┌─────────┴──────────┐      │       │
│         │   │ VM with PCI support   │     │                    │      │       │
│         │   │ Re-exporting drives   ├─────► VMWare DataStore   │      │       │
│         │   │ or luns via iSCSI     │     │                    │      │       │
│         │   └───────────▲───────────┘     └────────────────────┘      │       │
│         │               │                                             │       │
│         └───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────┘       │
│                         │                                                     │
│              ┌──────────┴───────────┐                                         │
│              │ HBA/RAID PCI device  │                                         │
│              └──────────▲───────────┘                                         │
│                         │                    Dell R720                        │
│                         │                                                     │
│                         │                                                     │
│               ┌─────────┴──────────┐                                          │
│               │  all them disks    │                                          │
│               └────────────────────┘                                          │
│                                                                               │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

This would of course not really work if you want to boot ESXi itself from the storage array as well ;-) But the gender changer should also work.

If the gender changer doesn't work (too big or wrong external form factor because it was intended as a coupler), then I'm afraid someone else will have to chime in because I never had the need to source parts for this type of mod myself.

 

[antonical]

Yes to your point 1 that would work. Your google fu is better than mine as I could not find any. It looks like the link you sent could be the only place in the world that sells them!

Short 8643 to 8087 then into this coupler then into the backplane 8087 connector.

It would give us a forward path for not a lot of cost.I like your architecture but I suspect it would not be performant enough for a number of the VM's.

Thanks for the help, much appreciated.

Cheers
Spart

 

[ericloewe]

Does the R720 need a cable with an odd bend? Because if it doesn't, any suitably long SFF-8643 to SFF-8087 cable will work.

Otherwise, you can track down suitable cables, with the correct right angle on the SFF-8087 connector., but you'll need to dig deep. No personal experience, but Art of Server is fairly popular and I seem to recall him carrying such cables.

can't seem to find any SFF8643 male to SFF8087 female

That's because that's a very weird thing. All devices and adapters have female connectors.

 

[antonical]

Does the R720 need a cable with an odd bend? Because if it doesn't, any suitably long SFF-8643 to SFF-8087 cable will work.

Otherwise, you can track down suitable cables, with the correct right angle on the SFF-8087 connector., but you'll need to dig deep. No personal experience, but Art of Server is fairly popular and I seem to recall him carrying such cables.

That's because that's a very weird thing. All devices and adapters have female connectors.

It's been a while since It looked under the covers. I seem to remember it has a complex loom that bridges front to back and has pretty complex routing. Then splits out into 2 8087 male connectors at the rear PCI-E bay. I have the 8 x 3.5 LFF version.

 

[ericloewe]

It's been a while since It looked under the covers. I seem to remember it has a complex loom that bridges front to back and has pretty complex routing. Then splits out into 2 8087 male connectors at the rear PCI-E bay. I have the 8 x 3.5 LFF version.

The backplane connectors are still standard SFF-8087, Dell may have simply made things slightly easier by bundling all the cables together. Though I remember them being separate cables run together, albeit with slightly different lengths.

 

[Moopere]

Have a close look at the HBA connector. Its going to be female and look like this:


The cable should be male and look like this:



I don't have an R720 in front of me but this should be pretty standard.

The main difficulty I've had in the past using generic SAS cables in Dell servers is getting a quality cable that also carries the sideband signals in the correct configuraton. Without these I always end up with problems with the backplane LEDs. Sometimes the power LED won't show up, sometimes the drive activity ... sometimes both.