Strange USB ports on the inside of a Dell 2950 - on side panel

[tankman1989]

I'm parting out a 2950 and came across something strange. It seems to be 2 USB connectors that are not used and one that is not really accessible because of some black plate with the USB symbol on it.

Does anyone know what these are for and what they might be utilized for? Testing of some kind? It seems very difficult for the ports to be reached so what is the point?

These ports are located on the left side of the server if that matters.

I also just noticed a light blue SATA A connector in the middle of the motherboard. Any idea what this is about? I don't see any connections from boards that would use it.

 

[DocGreen]

Seems like a great place for a Hollywood secret agent to hide some sort of covert spy device... lol

 

[tankman1989]

Seems like a great place for a Hollywood secret agent to hide some sort of covert spy device... lol

Or some kind of Keylogger aka/spydevice

It's strange, I'm taking apart HP Proliant & HP blade servers, IBM X3850's, Dell 1950's Dell 2850's, Cisco MCS 7800 series and I can say that none of them have anything like this in them. That and the SATA port have me a little confused!

 

[grayfoxcomputing]

What's under the cover? Maybe it's used for a diagnostic port?

 

[daverichards]

In newer servers you should find internal USB ports, they are using them instead of a hard drive.

You can install ESXi on a flash drive and run your VM's from a shared storage device, SAN or NAS

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

It's a riser card providing additional ports (some of which happen to be USB). To use for various components, as you wish..depending on what options you install on the server. Many servers typically have an onboard USB port or several.

 

[bluecoast]

In newer servers you should find internal USB ports, they are using them instead of a hard drive.

You can install ESXi on a flash drive and run your VM's from a shared storage device, SAN or NAS

This!

I am running ESXi on a flash drive, it allows you to allocate 100% of the hard drives for VM's. Upgrading is great with the USB stick too, put the upgraded hypervisor on a new stick, plug it in and reboot. You just upgraded your hypervisor, if anything goes bad, pop in the old stick to rollback. It is a great backout strategy for upgrading hypervisors.

 

[tankman1989]

This!

I am running ESXi on a flash drive, it allows you to allocate 100% of the hard drives for VM's. Upgrading is great with the USB stick too, put the upgraded hypervisor on a new stick, plug it in and reboot. You just upgraded your hypervisor, if anything goes bad, pop in the old stick to rollback. It is a great backout strategy for upgrading hypervisors.

can't you do all that with the USB port in the back?

 

[bluecoast]

can't you do all that with the USB port in the back?

You could, but the internal connector has some dedicated boot options as well as protecting the usb from accidental bumps or removals.

 

[tankman1989]

You could, but the internal connector has some dedicated boot options as well as protecting the usb from accidental bumps or removals.

Very good points. The more I look at the black plate with the USB symbol on it I can't think of any reason for it other than identifying the port. It does also block one of the USB ports when the plate is there.

I guess you could have 2 USB drives on there, maybe they are in RAID or at least you can place 2 of the same in case one goes bad, or you can put another hypervisor on it so you can toggle between the two.

Can anyone think of the reason the plate MUST block USB port 1? Removing the plate makes the user aware that the port is there so that is one thing that it is good for, also the icon is large so you can't miss it.


Now, 2 more questions for another thread. There is a SATA A port in the middle of the motherboard and there is no DRAC port on this motherboard, I thought they were standard.

 

[Artiste1]

Hi,

As the other posts have written, the USB ports are used for backup devices or Hypervisors. Having them on the inside, they can not be removed by accident or damaged.
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Please bear in mind, that my answer is based on the details given in your post. The more I get the better the answer, Slan go foill, Paul

 

[tankman1989]

Well I'm glad I found this little thing cuz that's how I'm running my server now! Makes things a little neater!

Now if I could only figure out what these SATA A and SATA B ports are for and how I can use them for my server. They are disabled by default but I'd like to be able to RAID a couple SSD's if that is possible. I don't think the RAID will work with the PERC 6 card though. Are the drives supposed to be mounted on cards in the back or something? I just can't see where a drive would be mounted other than the front and SATA fits SAS so why are there SATA ports?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Flexibility and availability for other options. Not all servers ship with the same RAID card....not all servers ship with a RAID card. Not all servers ship with hot swap drives. But, motherboards are generally outfitted with ports that allow various different configs.

 

[tankman1989]

Flexibility and availability for other options. Not all servers ship with the same RAID card....not all servers ship with a RAID card. Not all servers ship with hot swap drives. But, motherboards are generally outfitted with ports that allow various different configs.

Good point. Just because I've only ever seen the top of the line poweredges, doesn't mean that there aren't some low-level ones...