In my lab I have a Dell PowerEdge T300 that's been my main test machine for a while. It was bought with SATA and the smallest drive possible because I always netboot my test boxes and don't need local storage.
A few months ago I got a Nehalem box that I've increasingly used for my testing. And consequently I decided to make the T300 my build box.
My old build box had a bunch of nice SAS drives that I intended to move to the T300. However, the T300 didn't have a suitable SAS wiring harness. Also, I decided to leave one of the SAS drives in the old build box. So I needed an extra SAS controller.
Off I went to Dell's website. I ordered a SAS controller for the T300. And then I spent a couple of hours trying to find the part number for the matching SAS wiring harness.
My T300 was wired for SATA so I needed a SAS data cable (SAS is dual-ported and has slightly different connectors). I needed SFF-8484 to 4 x SFF-8482. Also, in the T300 power and data are wired into the same connector so the wiring harness also had to provide a 2x5 pin hookup to the power supply.
I looked and looked. Turns out the harness is only listed on the US support site, not the Canadian one (The part # is NP390 in case anybody is interested).
I called up Dell's parts department, gave them the part number and two days later I had the cable in the mail. Yay!
Today the SAS controller arrived. And guess what? Inside the box was a wiring harnesses suitable for my T300. Serves me right for trying to outsmart the system. When you order a controller for a T300 you actually get the right cable. D'oh! I don't think it's worth the hassle returning a $17 part, though. So now I have a spare...
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