Have you ever chosen a chassis based on the expansion slot heights?

[Dajinn]

Just curious what everyone's experience is with buying their add-on cards and the difficulty(and lack there-of)of obtaining the proper mounting brackets(high-profile or low-profile).

I'm considering what nodes I want to add to my setup and have been ruminating on the SC826 for a while until I saw that the Dell R510 can host the same number of 3.5" drives but at the cost of expansion slots. The SC826 has the full number of expansion slots(7 IIRC), but are low-profile. The R510 has 3 full-height expansion slots and an internal storage slot.

I've seen some folks around here come into difficulty of obtaining specific brackets for their infiniband cards. So for those of you who buy everything separately or individually has the expansion slot form factor ever weighed into your final decisions and what have you found you valued more(as far as bracket availability and other factors are considered), LP or HP?

 

[Chuckleb]

Most cards that I want to use in my servers come in either LP or FH so I'm not too worried. The only exception are the video cards, where they are all full height cards. Almost every bracket can be found - one way or another.

M1015 - there's someone on the Forums/ebay who sells FH brackets for the LP cards that people buy
ConnectX cards (gen1) - I manufactured LP brackets for the FH cards that were around
ConnectX2 + X3 cards - You can still get the brackets from some vendors. The LP ones are the ones that people are usually looking for.
Mellanox 10GbE cards - come with both brackets generally

Those are the common add-in cards that I can think off top of head... at least. So cards are available.

 

[Dajinn]

Do you have any links you would be willing to share that has brackets for purchase for the dual port QSFP cards?

 

[Chuckleb]

I'd have to look but I do have 2 on my desk for some odd reason if you are in need. MEC003275-00 is the PN

 

[Dajinn]

Which bracket Is that for, lp or hp? And do you have the pn for the other one that it's not?

 

[Chuckleb]

Those are the LP ones. I can grab a card at work Tuesday and look for the PN then for the FH one.

 

[Dajinn]

Any word on the high profile bracket PN? Cards that come with it that are a reasonable price on ebay are going by the way side. I missed out on 4 at a good price due to my hesitation -_-

 

[Patrick]

Just as a FYI - I think a lot of these brackets are interchangeable except those that have rear I/O. I have used a M5014 controller bracket on an Intel DC P3700 and a Fusion-io card.

Another thought is that you can get 2U chassis with PCIe risers that come in a mix of half and full height expansion.

 

[Chuckleb]

FH bracket: MEC003274-00

 

[Dajinn]

Thanks! Oh man...that one is rare.

 

[Aluminum]

It ended up being cheaper to buy like 10 full height brackets from OEM for mellanox QSFP cards than trying to get 2 sold separate from cards on fleabay, I think I got them for $30ish shipped. Saved me $100 in the end being able to get the cheaper LP X-3 cards available at the time, plus they came with fresh foil sticky pads.

 

[Dajinn]

Where did you buy them? Do you have a link or did you just contact Mellanox.

 

[Aluminum]

looking back at my order from 2013 it was these guys Advanced HPC - Home
I think they drop shipped from mellanox so other vendors likely do the same

Brackets were only 2.50 ea but $26 shipping because no USPS option, probably why I got extras (which came in handy recently)