HP's Proliant DL360 G7 and G8 have USB 2.0 compatible ports. Does anyone have any experience upgrading their G7/G8 Proliant running Windows Server 2K8 or 2K12 with one of the available PCIe cards that offer USB 3.0 ports?
USB 3.0 Card for HP Proliant DL360 G7 and G8
hp-proliantpci-expressusb
Best Answer
Surprisingly, this was not an easy problem to solve because a lot of PCIe USB 3.0 cards don't support Windows Server. The other problem I ran into is that the PCIe-based USB 3.0 cards require an auxiliary 5V power connection - typically provided by a 15-pin SATA power connector or a 4-pin Molex power connector - neither of which are available on a DL380 G7.
The solution I came up with is to use a StarTech PEXUSB312A card which provides 2 USB 3.1 ports and requires a PCIe X slot. It has a SATA 15 pin power connector for the aux power.
The 5V aux power is provided to the StarTech card by connecting the internal USB port (J33 near the power supplies on the DL380 motherboard) to the 15-pin aux power connector on the StarTech using a MicroSATA Cables cable SKU USB-15PFSATA which is available on Amazon.
Do not install the default driver that windows offers to install. The StarTech card does not come with a driver disk, but you can download drivers for virtually any version of windows back to XP from their web site. Driver install went smoothly. StarTech email support is friendly and responsive.