Hi Jason,

I'm just facing the same prob here: We've bought a PowerEdge R710 along with some workstations and other stuff in december '11. I did not waste one single thought that it might not be possible to use USB 3.0 adapters in in an almost brand new machine, but this was exactly what the Dell 'Support' told me. At the moment I'm using different input channels at Dell to get a solution, and - if this won't work out, at least to keep some people running.

The service Dell provides is really embarrassing, I'll keep this in mind when thiking about future investments...

M.

Hi Jason,

can you please tell me the exact type of the addon-card?

Best regards,

mIPs

I ended up putting a card in and it work 99.95% of the time.  From time to time it will loose connection for a minute and reconnect.  I don't know if it is related to the card not having extra power or not.  I also found a company that made a custom cable to connect to the CD-rom/DVD power (Y cable) that tapped into it to bring it back to the card.  I have the cable but since it is working, I haven't bothered to install it yet. It a production high volume server so I have left it alone.  The USB Disconnect/reconnect happens maybe once or twice a month. I have it running a test Virtual server and it does pretty well in hyperV.

Jason

This was the only one that supported Windows 2008R2 64Bit and so far so good..

www.buffalotech.com/.../usb-30-pci-express-interface-card

As Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 (x64) share the same kernel, drivers for Windows 7 x64 should work on 2008 R2 as well.

Note that USB isn't really an enterprise class IO connection, which is why Dell will never officially support it on your server. Once Intel adds USB 3.0 to the chipset as native, you may see it on servers. I'm not sure if Intel added it to the C600-series chipsets (and if Dell opted to implement this on their new 12th generation servers).

no, it works fine without it. I think because the Buffalo is externally powered it doesn't need the extra power.

BTW, I bought two PICe cards that supported Win7 and the drivers did not load. The one I got from BuffaloTech worked. I checked with their Support team before I ordered it.

USB 3.0 is an easy an quick connection option, in my case we're talking of a small business environment with about 20 Windows-clients, some LINUX-Machines and the R710 with SBS 2011 running on it. I can't follow your argumentation regarding chipset integration of USB 3.0 by Intel because my R710 is equipped with an external RAID-Controller which, following your argumentation, also isn't enterprise class. Even the solution suggested by Dell (NAS connected over GBit LAN (very secure backup *sfg*) wouldn't be enterprise class.

mIPs

Thank you very much for the information. Did I understand you right, that you didn't connect the floppy power connector located on the PCI-Card and running a 2.5" disk was possible without an extra power supply?

Regards,

mIPs

The adapter DELL sent me also works fine, as long as I don't connect a device that needs a little more power (such as 2,5" external disks without extra power supply)

mIPs

I've spent some time to find an adapter that works without extra power supply (doing DELL's work). I've found ExSys EX-11092, which works fine with our 2,5" backup disks without extra power supply.

mIPs