UCS C240 M3 - installing a USB PCIe expansion card

[Koopa]

Good day,

I've recently purchased the following PCIe USB expansion card (https://www.volans.com.au/product/vl-pu34/) as I'm wanting to have extra USB ports on my Cisco C240 M3 High Density SFF server.

I've installed the card in the PCIe 3 lane. Is there anything special I have to do to get this card working within my server (drivers etc) ?

The card does have a molex power supply on the back of it (not sure if this needs power or if it's just for power boosting purposes).

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. I'm love playing around with this server, I'm looking to use it as a home storage, NVR server running TrueNas Scale (looking moving my OS to Ubuntu), and so I'm needing to expand the USB ports on it.

Kind regards, 

Brad Cooper

[Koopa]

Or if this is the wrong card, could someone please advise what is the best solution for expanding USB ports on my Cisco C240 M3

Cheers, Brad

[Kasun Bandara]

you can easily use USB hub for this requirement

[Kirk J]

Many add-in USB port cards will typically have some sort of driver the card MFG provides.

Depending on your exact OS version, you may/may not need to install it.

The M3s just had USB2 speed ports, so adding an additional (assuming USB 3 +) one should give you additional & faster USB throughput.

Adding in non-Cisco cards, can make the server fans speed up.  The CIMC that is monitoring temperature and controlling fans, won't know exactly what kind of device it is, and may speed the fans up to cover a number of cooling requirement scenarios.

Kirk...

[Koopa]

Hi team, thanks for the replies. 

Duly noted with the non-cisco card and fan scenerio.

So I've installed the card, booted the server but yet when I plug in something to the usb slots I'm getting no power to the card (that I know of). 

Do I have to activate the card from within CIMC? 

[Kirk J]

You might want to check the PCI/Option-ROM area in the CIMC's BIOS setup area, and make sure the PCI-E slot you have your card installed in doesn't have the link/speed set to 'disabled'.  Should say Gen1/Gen2, etc

Kirk...

[Koopa]

Awesome, I'll have a look into that when I get home from work. Will revert back circa 11th October.