Mezzanine Adapters
A mezzanine card is a network or storage adapter that plugs into a dedicated mezzanine connector instead of a standard PCIe card slot. Mezzanine cards serve Dell PowerEdge M-series blades and MX7000 compute sleds in Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand versions, and Dell rack servers and C-series sleds use the related OCP 3.0, OCP 2.0 and LOM mezzanine NICs. Every mezzanine card is lab-tested before it ships and carries an Enterasource warranty.
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Server mezzanine cards
In a server, a mezzanine card is a network or storage adapter that mounts flat on its own connector inside a blade or rack server, and it connects to whatever that connector is wired to. Embedded-computing mezzanine boards are a separate family and are not covered here.
Which mezzanine card for which blade fabric
A blade mezzanine card has to match the I/O modules it connects to, and Dell's blade documentation sets the rule for each chassis:
| Platform | Card slots | What the cards connect to | Dell's rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| PowerEdge M1000e blades (M-series) | Mezzanine slots B and C, PCIe x8 Gen 3 on the M640, beside the network daughter card | I/O module bays B1 and B2, C1 and C2 | The card in each slot must match the fabric type of the I/O modules in its bays |
| PowerEdge MX7000 compute sleds | Ethernet and Fibre Channel mezzanine cards | General-purpose Fabrics A and B; Fabric C for storage | Up to four Fabric A/B and two Fabric C I/O modules per chassis; Ethernet pass-through modules do not support 1G mezzanine cards |
| Rack servers, 15th generation on | OCP 3.0 NIC slot | The integrated LAN, including shared LOM for iDRAC | Small-form-factor OCP 3.0 cards at PCIe Gen 4, up to x16 |
The M640 itself is a half-height blade for the PowerEdge M1000e enclosure, and its two mezzanine slots take dual-port 10GbE, quad-port 1GbE, 8Gb or 16Gb Fibre Channel, or InfiniBand cards. Cards marked MX are for the PowerEdge MX7000, whose compute sleds include the MX740c and MX840c.
OCP and LOM mezzanine cards for rack servers
Dell uses mezzanine-style NIC cards in rack servers too, and its PowerEdge R760 technical guide compares them: OCP 2.0, which Dell calls LOM Mezz, runs PCIe Gen 3 with up to x16 lanes, OCP 3.0 runs PCIe Gen 4 with up to x16 lanes, and both support shared LOM for iDRAC. Dell's R650 owner's manual and R760 technical guide both list OCP 3.0 for the integrated NIC, and its R750 guide specifies the small OCP 3.0 form factor.
Related pages: network daughter cards for 13th- and 14th-generation rack servers, PCIe network cards under server adapters, and PCIe Fibre Channel cards under Fibre Channel HBAs. For when blades make sense at all, read blade servers vs rack servers.
