Upgrade R230 from 2x LFF to 4x LFF

[krakonos]

Hi!

I'm looking to get a Dell R230 for some experiments with storage. I see a lot of cheap-ish servers around with 2x LFF. I wonder if they can be converted to 4x LFF? The cheap ones don't have a backplane and are just cabled. That's OK for my use, but I'm not sure if it's possible to remove the front blank and just add 2 extra caddies, and I don't expect the cables to be there, if it's possible to use a generic cable.

Anybody tried this? If it's too much of a hassle, I'll just get the 4x LFF version - but for some reason, they're almost 2x as expensive (I usually only see them overseas).

Thanks!

 

[name stolen]

I've had a 4x LFF R230 for almost 7 years. I don't know, but I would guess that you could "place" a couple of cabled SATA SSDs behind the blanks in the 2x LFF version. If you can come up with the SATA ports and power plugs, maybe even a couple stacked in each bay. I'm not sure there's any available power plug/port inside a stock R230 though. I use the ODD bay for a boot SATA SSD, and that has its own funky cable.

(btw sometime this long weekend I'll open mine up and double check the internal power situation.)

 

[Dev_Mgr]

Some years ago, I was told by Dell that changing the backplane isn't an option (from Dell), as it may require a completely different chassis to have the bays for the drives, then you need a backplane, and then possibly different cables (though a typical SAS HBA or raid controller will use x4 SAS cables, so going from 2 to 4 drives likely wouldn't require changing cables (maybe length though, as it's possible that the 4-drive backplane has the connector in another location).

 

[krakonos]

Interesting. I almost want to buy both just to check what they did. But I doubt they made a different chassis just for it. It's probably a blanking plate for the 2 missing drives. I also did not find a 2x LFF version with a backplane - they all seem to be cabled. So perhaps it's a sheet metal cage + backplane + different cabling?

For my use case I could just shove the drives in and bring over a SATA cable, so it's not a big deal. But I must admit I like to have things done right, even if it's more work and more expensive.

 

[name stolen]

Be patient on the search - I see used R230s with 4 bays on ebay all the time in the US, at prices so low that they keep me from wanting to sell mine. That would be doing it right