Mellanox Optical Transceiver/VPI connectivity

[brianmat]

I just wanted to see if these will work with ConnectX-2 VPI (40GB/s) cards:

Mellanox SSF 8436 QSFP MC2207310 Infiniband Optical Transceiver Emcore | eBay

I know the cables have been cut, but it seems like a good price for the transceivers if they will work. I am thinking those would be much less bulky than some of the bigger QSFP cables we have been testing with.

 

[Chuckleb]

...... Wait, so you'd just replace the cable? Are they terminated inside or an LC plug? Etc? Curious. Not going to buy 9000 units, but could see quite a few..

 

[s0lid]

Fiber welding is pretty much the only option here, there's 8 MM strands that have been directly terminated to the optical sensors or the lasers.

 

[Aluminum]

Cut QSFP active optical cables are useless unless you have access to newer, high end fiber install equipment. I highly doubt your typical telecom field splicer would be up to snuff, but if your day job is to build or fix the big runs then sure why not.

I wonder why they decided to cut 9000 cables out of some server farm and leave that money on the table, maybe there was a time limit or just dumb liquidators?

 

[neo]

I wonder why they decided to cut 9000 cables out of some server farm and leave that money on the table, maybe there was a time limit or just dumb liquidators?

I would guess long fiber runs that went inside walls/ceilings/underground. Might have been a pain to pull it out.

 

[s0lid]

Cut QSFP active optical cables are useless unless you have access to newer, high end fiber install equipment. I highly doubt your typical telecom field splicer would be up to snuff, but if your day job is to build or fix the big runs then sure why not.

Those optical cables are just 8 normal 50/125 multimode fiber strands with less kevlar and tubing around them, nothing too fancy that couldn't be spliced with "typical telecom field splicer". Even splicing 48x 9/125 SM cable in -30c freezing coldness is possible with fairly normal field splicer.

 

[brianmat]

Based on the photos it looked like I could just replace the optical cable with a new patch cable and use the transceivers.