Will a HP FlexFabric dual 10gig card work in a normal pci-e slot?

[legopc]

The title basically says it all....
I just saw a HP FlexFabric 533FLR-T on Ebay for cheap, But i'm not sure if it will work in a normal computer/server. I know it has a PCI-E connector, but i'm not sure if HP changed the pin layout or if they made it so these cards only work in hp servers. Or can i just assume it works since it uses PCI-E?

 

[Mr. F]

We have these LOM cards in our Gen8's, but I haven't tried them in a normal PCIe slot. Good thinking for a cheap 10GBase-T option, though. I'll pull one out and try it in a desktop next time I have the server down. The LOM cards have a little PCB 'chin' in front of the PCIe connector that may pose a problem on a normal motherboard, though.

Note that these things run HOT. No load idle right now is 74C. A fan would definitely need to be added to the heatsink.

 

[Patriot]

The ALOMs are also shorter than normal pcie... the distance between the slot and the ports is less than a normal.
Other than that I think they are regular pcie but I have yet to try it.

 

[legopc]

We have these LOM cards in our Gen8's, but I haven't tried them in a normal PCIe slot. Good thinking for a cheap 10GBase-T option, though. I'll pull one out and try it in a desktop next time I have the server down. The LOM cards have a little PCB 'chin' in front of the PCIe connector that may pose a problem on a normal motherboard, though.

Note that these things run HOT. No load idle right now is 74C. A fan would definitely need to be added to the heatsink.

Thank you very much, but when do you think you will be able to try? I'm asking since the auction is over in 2 days and I dont want to spend money on something I cant use. And if I do decide to buy it I can just dremel that little "chin" away.

The ALOMs are also shorter than normal pcie... the distance between the slot and the ports is less than a normal.
Other than that I think they are regular pcie but I have yet to try it.

I assume you are not talking about the actual connector? I don't really care about how it fits just as long as it works.

 

[Patriot]

 

[legopc]

Thanks for the pictures, but could you also try if the card works in a non compatible board
Edit: With this I mean anything but the servers that HP listed to be compatible.

 

[OBasel]

I'd say that's an "it works kind of" from a physical perspective.

If you did have a 1U chassis you might be able to use a flexible riser with one.

 

[Patriot]

Hrmm UEFI doesn't see the card in that config. Mr. F can try on his stuff to confirm... I guess I can throw it in another box as well...

 

[legopc]

Hrmm UEFI doesn't see the card in that config. Mr. F can try on his stuff to confirm... I guess I can throw it in another box as well...

What do you mean "that config"? Do these cards even show up in BIOS/UEFI? But thanks for trying

 

[Patriot]

What do you mean "that config"? Do these cards even show up in BIOS/UEFI? But thanks for trying

It is a ML110 Gen9 Don't know if the particular ALOM I tried was bad or unsupported or just unsupported plugging into a non-ALOM.
Didn't show up in UEFI under pci devices... don't have an OS loaded.

 

[Mr. F]

Thank you very much, but when do you think you will be able to try? I'm asking since the auction is over in 2 days and I dont want to spend money on something I cant use. And if I do decide to buy it I can just dremel that little "chin" away.

Sorry, not in 2 days. Next time we turn off the server for a little while I'll give it a shot. Thinking more about it, I'm not sure how valid my test would be, though, since all we have around are HP desktops.

If you find one cheap enough it might be worth it to try - you could always resell it. As others mentioned, your best bet would be to mount it to a rear panel and use a flexible riser cable since it doesn't have the same spacing as typical PCIe cards.

 

[legopc]

I think i'm just going to buy for shits and giggles. And if it doesn't work is anyone interested in a HP FlexFabric 533FLR-T?

 

[mrkrad]

Supposively if you can get it to fit, it will operate at pci-e x4 lane!

 

[Mr. F]

I think i'm just going to buy for shits and giggles. And if it doesn't work is anyone interested in a HP FlexFabric 533FLR-T?

Looking forward to hearing how it works. Don't forget to put a fan on that thing!

 

[legopc]

The adapter went for more then I expected, so I didn't get it. But maybe @Mr. F could provide the answer in a couple of days.

 

[chansen]

I have 2 of these, bought on eBay for £45 each. As I have 4 HP Gen8 Microservers, the 8-lane pcie seemed to be a fit so I got excited.
Turns out, the card itself is not aligned to fit a std bracket, but there is enough room to seat the card into the pcie slot, and the 2 Cat6 cables can actually slip through the back of the cab and connect to the card. Looks a bit clunky, but with a few bits of plastic to support and zip-locks, it all connects ok. Job done (I thought), and booted up the box.

The initial stuff on the iLO does not show anything to indicate that it found the new card. Neither does esxi 6.x
So at least for now, it seems to NOT work in a Gen8 Microserver.

I have another (albeit older) PC with an Asus Gene iV and i7 cpu, which I will try the cards in, but just haven't yet had time to work on this. According to the specs, these cards do conform to std pcie v2 on 8-lanes, so I haven't given up just yet. Will try with a bare-metal Linux and see if I can at least get some low level pci info. If its just a matter of drivers, considering the price (and availability on eBay) of the cards. I'd say it deserves a bit of experimenting at least.

Will update when I get around to testing further...

 

[Kezzz]

I have an "HPE 665243-B21 560FLR Dual-port 10GbE FlexLOM Card" that I tried to add to an available PCIe2-x16 slot on my IBM System x3650 M3 server, but the server will not see it. I took out 2x single-port 10GbE cards in favor of this dual-port, so I know the expansion slots are fine. It is obviously shorter than a standard PCIe card, but I just put the TwinAX cables through the slot and connected to the card. Perhaps my FlexLOM card could be bad? I have no other way to test it, as in an HPE Gen8+ server with a FlexLOM slot.

 

[arglebargle]

I have an "HPE 665243-B21 560FLR Dual-port 10GbE FlexLOM Card" that I tried to add to an available PCIe2-x16 slot on my IBM System x3650 M3 server, but the server will not see it. I took out 2x single-port 10GbE cards in favor of this dual-port, so I know the expansion slots are fine. It is obviously shorter than a standard PCIe card, but I just put the TwinAX cables through the slot and connected to the card. Perhaps my FlexLOM card could be bad? I have no other way to test it, as in an HPE Gen8+ server with a FlexLOM slot.

This won't work, the electrical pinout on the flexLOM board is (intentionally) different from regular PCIe.

This comes up every so often when someone new notices how ridiculously cheap flexLOM boards are relative to normal PCIe cards. I had the same idea a couple of years ago too.

To get these working someone needs to find or reverse engineer the pin layout for the flexLOM slot. We think that they're using standard PCIe with a nonstandard slot pinout but no one has been able to get documentation on the flexLOM spec and afaik no one has successfully reverse engineered the connector either.

If they are indeed using standard PCIe with a nonstandard pin layout then it would be perfectly viable to make an adapter cable that reorders the pins and then these flexLOM boards should behave like normal PCIe cards. But that's a lot of assumptions, without anyone reversing the system we don't really know what they're doing.

 

[Kezzz]

This won't work, the electrical pinout on the flexLOM board is (intentionally) different from regular PCIe.

This comes up every so often when someone new notices how ridiculously cheap flexLOM boards are relative to normal PCIe cards. I had the same idea a couple of years ago too.

To get these working someone needs to find or reverse engineer the pin layout for the flexLOM slot. We think that they're using standard PCIe with a nonstandard slot pinout but no one has been able to get documentation on the flexLOM spec and afaik no one has successfully reverse engineered the connector either.

If they are indeed using standard PCIe with a nonstandard pin layout then it would be perfectly viable to make an adapter cable that reorders the pins and then these flexLOM boards should behave like normal PCIe cards. But that's a lot of assumptions, without anyone reversing the system we don't really know what they're doing.

Thanks for the input Argle. Perhaps Yannick can determine which pins we can mask with electrical tape like he figured on the SMbus problem causing so many cards to suffer boot issues?

 

[Kezzz]

Two weeks ago I jumped into this subject and failed to get my FlexLOM card working in a PCIe slot, but I wasn't able to cross-test to prove it wouldn't work. Since then I got a DL360 Gen9, and was able to both positive and negative cross-test the 560FLR FlexLOM and 560SFP+ PCIe cards in the FlexLOM and PCIe slots. This FlexLOM card will NOT work in a PCIe slot, even though it physically lines up in the slot.