HP Proliant DL380 G3 and SATA Drives

[Shaffin Bhanji]

Hello,

I need to re-purpose some servers that have been upgraded, but the requirement remains to replace the SCSI back-panel to SATA. Is there such a board that I get purchase to do this or a solution to place SATA drives? I dont want to attach external drives through a USB controller though.

Thanks,
Sam

[Tom O'Shea]

Hi Shaffin,

Did you have any luck using SATA drives with DL380 G3...?

Thanks
Tom

[Fred Mau]

Has anybody found a solution ? I need to do the same thing as Sam.

I've spent hours and hours searching the 'net, and the best I've been able to come up with is:

- There's a SATA backplane for the DL380 G4 but not the G3. I doubt you could use the G4 backplane in G3; the drives mount differently so the connectors will be in the wrong place. While I've seen hints of a G3 SATA backplane on the net, none have panned out.

- The "Official HP" solution apparently is to use a rack-mount StorageWorks enclosure connected to the DL380 G3 via fibrechannel and will hold 8 or 12 SAS or SATA drives depending on model. It's a pricey solution if you buy a new one, but maybe a bargain could be found on the surplus/used market ?

[Gjarboni]

Theoretically, this converter (80 pin SCA to 68 pin SCA):

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150385978056

should allow you to break out the power from the SCSI connector. Then you could run a 4 pin extender to the SATA drive and run a SATA cable through the holes in the back panel. I haven't tried it yet (and probably won't -- I already bought 160GB SCSI drives).

[An2]

You mentioned you found a sata backplane for the dl380 g4, could you reply with a link as I have been trying to find one for a very long time. Thanks.