R730 (not xd) NVME U.2 Expander or Backplane Kit

The only NVME equipment I could see in our parts tool was PCIe slotted cards that were basically nvme drives on a pcie card. This person at this link was able to get a 3rd party card and drives to work:
https://www.dell.com/community/Rack-Servers/NVMe-support-on-R720-R730/td-p/7434412

Iwork4Dell

Thank you for the feedback. I appreciate it. I had seen that one in doing my research. In reading the whole thread it sounded like he only got it to work for the 720, not the 730.

Dell does offer a complete NVME kit for the R720, I believe it is kit #86M4K - I would be completely comfortable trying that in the R730 if the signal and power cables are common across 12th & 13th gen platforms. Otherwise, all of the rest of the parts are entirely independent and should work on the R730. If the pinouts and connectors are the same I don't care what part # they are. Does anyone know if these are common cables across platforms?

Dell does offer the kit for the T630 as well, part #WYNC0

If I could get that backplane into a regular R730 cage I would be tempted to try to Frankenstein that. The reason is that even if I have to use the T630 firmware or driver it should work because the signal and electrical architecture is likely to be the same or very similar.

I looked at the parts for the kit 86M4K, and there are 4 cables that would go from the card to the backplane. However, when I look at the 8x2.5 and 8x3.5 backplanes, they only have 2 of the connectors available, rather than the 4 that come from the card. I have my doubts on this working on the R730. for the T630, WYNCO doesnt show to be nvme in our internal tools, it showsn to be sas/sata...
#Iwork4Dell

Thank you for the feedback. Do you have any other thoughts on how to get the 2.5 inch form factor, NVME drives to work? Getting X8 cards with NVME is a fall back position I guess. But I was hoping for the swappable / mirror capable 2.5 drives.

Maybe I'm wrong here about the U2 NVME, but, WYNC0 is a cage kit with 4x 2.5 PCIe(U2) slots + backplane. The backplane part number is 2NJDR. I have seen that same backplane used on the R720 NVME with the standard 8x drive cage and a 4 drive blank (because only 4 drive bays are available).

If I wanted to try to build this kit, it seems to look something like this:

- R730 8 bay drive cage - P51CF
- NVME U2 backplane 2NJDR
- The card looks like it is NVMe PCIe extender card GY1TD
- The 4 way cable appears to be K9TVP (OR, the R730XD cables 1PDFM)
- A compatible signal cable looks like the 23.5" TRFPV
- Power cable 123W8

The big differences between the R720 and R730 version I'm toying with Franken-building together looks like it is the PCIE Extender Card and the 4 way cable. The one I'm puzzled about is the length of the 4 way cable and whether it is long enough to go around to the PCIE card.

Any thoughts?

I agree, the length of the cables could be the issue. I'm trying to get my hands on the 2NJDR backplane now to see if this will work, but I doubt it will get to me today, and I'm out the rest of this week and next week. 
#Iwork4Dell 

Thank you for checking into this. Here are the sources on how I pieced it together:

- R730 - R730 8 bay drive cage - P51CF
- T630 WYNC0 backplane - NVME U2 backplane 2NJDR
- T630 & R730xd - The card looks like it is NVMe PCIe extender card GY1TD
- R730xd - The 4 way cable appears to be K9TVP (OR, the R730XD cables 1PDFM)
- R730xd - A compatible signal cable looks like the 23.5" TRFPV
- T630 WYNC0 - Power cable 123W8 (this cable may not be long enough)

Using this route the backplane and the PCIE card should be able to get firmware and drivers. They may require the T630 drivers / firmware, but still (unofficially) supported and consistent.