Dell Power Edge 2950: PCI to USB 3.0 Card

Was the issue coming from the Server OS side or the actually detection with the hardware?

I haven't seen anyone try USB 3 on a PowerEdge yet, but on the older servers (pre-USB 2.0), the USB 2.0 cards with the VIA chipset didn't have a good success rate. The cards with an NEC USB2 chip had a better success rate.

I don't know if this also applies to the more modern servers and the USB 3.0 cards, but I wanted to share this experience with the VIA chips on PowerEdge servers as it may help you on your 'trial and error' process.

It was a hardware detection issue (with the USB 2 cards in the pre-USB 2 servers).

Well after speaking with Dell they are saying that I should just use StarTech's PCE-E USB 3.0 Card so if you have a riser card already in place with PCI-E I guess that the solution once we test it ill post here for future reference which ever way it goes. The Card is a Dell Part# A3337171. For those that may need it, you can get it through various suppliers since its not a DELL product.

Sorry for the long delay. We did not go through with that project. We decided to go with a different solution, but from what I was able to to pickup if you are in windows server 2003 environment that are products that should work. I just can't confirm which ones since I nevr ordered anything to play around with.

Excellent, I'm going to order this card and give it a go. I think I recall someone mentioning the need for a power cable, you wouldn't happen to what this cable is and where I should order it from? Again thanks for your help! :)

The Startech card will work without power cable, but according to the information I found to achieve full 3.0 performance manufacturer recommended to connect the power to the card. but give it a shot without the power cable first.

How do I connect power to the card?

There are no power wires coming out of the power supplies.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,                           DellRavi

You can't, unless you can somehow steal it from a drive port on the backplane ... it will NOT be plug and play - you will likely need a specific adapter for the job (IF it even puts out enough power for the card) or be an electronics engineer to figure out how to make one.

Just spoke with Dell (via chat). It is now January 2014, and they say that NONE of their servers are planned to support USB 3. The customer rep on chat was "EB_Patrick G" - The current R505 servers don't have it; and won't have it. EB_Patrick G says "these servers were released before USB 3 is as common as it is now." He said that future servers "may" support USB 3. If Dell does NOT build in support, they will be "behind the curve" and will be limiting their customers. I have a large number of USB 3 devices, none of which I can take full advantage of, unless I use an unsupported 3rd-party product. Not very comforting.

From the chat session, here are the links for Dell's recommended (yet unsupported) third-party Startech USB 3 card (and adapter):

Obviously, you would have to have an available/unused internal SATA power cable for this, coming from your 2950 or Rnnn power supply. So, anyone in the know, how would we accomplish that? Would we "split" a cable with a power splitter, if we have all our internal cables in use?