Running H8iR without backplane/extender?

[car7er]

Hi All,

New member and new to servers. I guess I have what would be a fairly simple question to most here. Can I use the SuperMicro H8iR without the backpane board? I'll be putting 8 2TB drives on it, with another bunch of drives running off the motherboard.

Some background. I'm replacing a Thecus N4200 Pro (and a stack of ext. USB drives). Looking for something in my budget I came across a Supermicro dual Xeon 2.4ghz with the H8iR and 12 gig ddr3 on an X8DTN+ motherboard ($76AU).

I knew going in that it'd be a hell of a noisy machine, did a bit of research and decided I could swap out the board into a full tower. What I didn't know about was the backplane board. So far, I've moved everything over to a desktop and all works fine but have't put the raid card back in as I didn't want to run the SATA drives straight off it without knowing if it's OK to do. I can't easily get the backplane and drive bay into the full tower. It's possible but a hell of a lot of work and would prefer not to go there if possible.

Before moving everything over, I setup up raid with the 4 320gig drives the server came with and it all seems to work ok. Got the Array loaded up in Windows and ran some HD tests.

Anyway, thats my story


Appreciate your help.


Thanks


Ben

 

[pricklypunter]

Which model H8iR?

 

[car7er]

Which model H8iR?

Hi Prickypunter,

USASLP-H8iR-SG007

 

[pricklypunter]

If this is the UIO variant, you would need to find another bracket for it as the UIO cards have the board on the wrong side for a standard PCI-E slot. You could fashion something up just to hold the card in place though. Other than that, it should work, but it is only an LSI 1078 based 3Gbps card and likely limited to what disk sizes you can use with it, probably the largest being 2TB. I would be looking for something a bit more up to date that is faster, doesn't have the disk limitation and draws less power. The M1015 or Dell H310 etc would be a better choice imo, of course this assumes that you don't need hardware raid with battery backup etc

 

[car7er]

Thanks for that

I'll keep an eye out for one of those. For now, I only need the 2TB as I already have 7 barracudas (that I've found) sitting around gathering dust. Just needed to make sure I wouldn't kill drives/card if I didn't use the backplane. When I saw how much was going on with the backplane, I thought it might be a necessary part for the H8iR. Glad to know I don't have to go nuts modding further. I assume the backplane adds some level of reporting to go back to the H8iR/System? or is it simply an extender and can be expanded with more extenders?

Looks like you're right about it being UIO. Thats no issue, I'll either buy a bracket or make one. Probably just make one.

Appreciate your time. Thanks mate.

 

[vanfawx]

You don't need to make one, just take one from a card you don't need anymore that has the same screw hole positions. Much easier I think than making one Unless you don't have anything you can scavenge from...

 

[ttabbal]

Or just creatively bend the one you have. I have a pair of supermicro 1068e based cards like that. I had to bend the 2 screw holes and the tab at the top that screws into the case. Remove it from the card first to avoid damage, of course.

These days, I'd probably try to work something up on my 3d printer though.

 

[pricklypunter]

Last time I encountered something like this, I used a strip cut from an old kids plastic table mat, gently heated it and bent it into shape. Used a couple of small bolts/ nuts to hold it on the card. It took all of about 5 mins to do. You don't need perfection here, just something to hold the card in place. If you are worried about strength or something poking through from the outside, just double it up with a standard blank and screw it on along with it, or if you want belts and braces, glue it to the blank