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For the Supermciro X7SPE-HF-D525 pfSense appliance I discussed in the linked post I of course wanted a chassis for my appliance and decided to purchase the CSE-502L-200B for just under $70 (see ebay and NewEgg). Oftentimes one does not need a massive chassis for a server. Frankly, with all of the mITX and mATX form factor boards out there, and all of the onboard features the boards have, there are a lot of applications where people do not need a large/ deep chassis. Using a shallower rackmount chassis allows one to use much smaller lightweight wall mounted network rack or telco post rack which saves a lot of space. As a result, for my Atom based pfSense appliance, I purchased a Supermicro CSE-502L-200B. Read the full story

I just wanted to update everyone on the Supermicro X7SPA-HF-D525 and X7SPE-HF-D525 review that was posted earlier as I have had a bit more time running the unit, especially as a pfsense appliance. Areas that will be looked at here are a higher-than-spec memory limit (4GB is not the max!), power consumption, and a word about IPMI 2.0 connectivity. Thus far, the network cabinet at home has been rock solid with the pfsense box managing routing duties in a fan-less configuration this week, even after I have been running a lot of network tests on the box. This is one I was able to justify purchasing for the new house which was great. Read the full story

The Supermicro X7SPA-HF-D525 and Supermicro X7SPE-HF-D525 boards reviewed today are somewhat unique, and let’s face it; fairly expensive Intel Atom based boards. Both boards are centered around an Intel Atom D525 dual core 1.8GHz chip that can handle up to four threads through Hyper-Threading. While an Atom D525 is a fairly standard part, especially when it comes to low power PC’s, Supermicro has done a lot to turn these boards into something suitable for server use.

For those wondering, the reason I am doing a split review here is because the X7SPA-HF-D525 and X7SPE-HF-D525 are both very similar boards. The “A” version is a standard mITX size board while the “E” version is slightly elongated to work with Supermicro’s CSE-502L-200B chassis and a 1U PCIe riser (review coming shortly as I purchased one of these also.) For practical purposes, the technical aspects are nearly identical aside from the size. Read the full story

One project that inspired some of my own work has been the Backblaze storage pod v1 which held 67TB in a custom 45 drive 4U chassis. It was essentially a lower cost and lower performance Sun Thumper that utilized commodity parts to achieve high storage densities at a very low cost per TB (or PB since that is the scale the company is looking at.) For those not familiar, Backblaze is a cloud storage provider offering $5 for unlimited storage. Backblaze recently revealed its updated v2 platform with 3.0gbps drives providing 135TB of capacity for under $8000. Better yet, they are freely distributing how they did this. It puts my DIY DAS to shame, but does look fairly similar with the dual PSUs and X8SIL-F to my DIY SAS Expander Enclosure V2 from last summer. Read the full story

One of the most popular mATX server motherboards reviewed on this site was the Supermicro X8SIL-F. It provided a small form-factor, relatively inexpensive platform with features one would want from a low-cost server motherboard. With the new Sandy Bridge Xeon’s Supermicro has an updated platform, the Supermicro X9SCM-F, that takes advantage of the new PCIe lanes from the Intel C204 chipset to provide an interesting alternative to the previous generation X8SIL-F. Read the full story

Dual AMD Socket G34 motherboards offer a lot of expandability and high core counts at competitive prices and the Supermicro H8DG6-F is no exception. With AMD’s current Opteron 6100 series Magny-cours socket G34 chips one can pack from eight to twenty-four cores on a dual socket motherboard at a reasonable price. With AMD’s upcoming Interlagos series of Bulldozer based Opterons the core count per socket is expected to rise to sixteen meaning that a single dual socket board like the Supermicro H8DG6-F will be able to accept up to thirty-two cores. Furthermore, the G34 platform scales to four sockets and has an upgrade path making it attractive for many businesses looking at future upgrade paths. As for the H8DG6-F, it is perhaps the most feature-packed dual socket G34 board reviewed to date. Read the full story

One question I get weekly is whether or not one should use Absolute or Relative mouse in the AMI MegaRAC-based IPMI 2.0 KVM-over-IP solutions. The answer is relatively simple: it depends. Read the full story

Supermicro’s AOC-STGN-i2S provides 10-gigabit ethernet using an Intel 82599 controller. Using dual SFP+ connectors and a PCIe 2.0 x8 interface, the card packs a lot of bandwidth in a relatively small, low profile package that can fit in 2U enclosures. One issue with today’s ubiquitous 1Gbps GigE connections is that they deliver anywhere from 100 to 125MB/s of real-world performance. That is simply too low for most modern storage servers. With previous generations of 10GbE controllers (e.g. Intel 82598), vendors have had to deal with very high power consumption that accompanied high throughput. With the introduction of the Intel 82599 controller that the AOC-STGN-i2S is based on, power consumption was reigned in and the cards became much more practical. The AOC-STGN-i2S provides dual SFP+ ports that can be used with appropriate copper or short range fibre SFP+ cabling to span 30m (copper) to 300m (fibre). Read the full story

Supermicro is well known for producing solid server motherboards, chassis, peripheral cards, and accessories. At the relatively lower-end of the market are uni-processor (UP) servers and workstations. Unlike dual and quad processor systems that oftentimes require specialized platforms, UP servers can tend to be very similar to higher-end consumer platforms. For example, Intel’s 5-series consumer chip sets were very similar to the 3400 series server chip sets, and in-fact, one could put a LGA 1156 Core i3-530 into a Intel 3400 series motherboard like the Supermicro X8SIL-F. Likewise, for a period of time I used an old Core i7 920 (later replaced by a Xeon W3550) in a Supermicro X8ST3-F which was basically the server version of a consumer X58 platform. As we have seen on this site, the next-generation Sandy Bridge Xeons such as the E3-1230 work in H67 consumer motherboards. Supermicro has taken its knowledge of UP server platforms and adapted it to the consumer market for Intel Sandy bridge platforms and has a new consumer offering, the C7P67 motherboard based on the P67 chip set. Read the full story

Supermicro contacted me about reviewing their SC842TQ-665B chassis a few weeks ago and I thought it would be a good departure from the pure storage chassis.  Sometimes, a large 4U 20-24 3.5″ bay enclosure is unnecessary. With today’s 3.5″ disk prices, adding a 4TB usable  RAID 6 array plus hot spare and a few SSDs for caching in ZFS L2ARC style configurations can be a very viable alternative when massive amounts of raw storage are not needed. The SC842TQ-665B has a mix of hot-swap bays, 5.25″ expansion bays, and solid cooling all in a small, 20.5″ deep, chassis. Read the full story