Supermicro A2SDi-8C+-HLN4F Management Overview
These days, out of band management is a standard feature on servers. Supermicro offers an industry standard solution for traditional management, including a WebGUI. This is based on the ASPEED AST2500 solution, a leader in the BMC field. The company is also supporting the Redfish management standard. On this motherboard, we see similar features as we would across the Supermicro X11/H11 ranges. That means whether you are using an embedded Intel motherboard or a 4U EPYC storage server, you will have a similar look and feel to the management experience.
In the latest generation of Supermicro IPMI is an HTML5 iKVM. One no longer needs to use a Java console to get remote KVM access to their server.
Currently, Supermicro allows users to utilize Serial-over-LAN, Java or HTML5 consoles from before a system is turned on, all the way into the OS. Other vendors such as HPE, Dell EMC, and Lenovo charge an additional license upgrade for this capability (among others with their higher license levels.) That is an extremely popular feature. One can also perform BIOS updates using the Web GUI but that feature does require a relatively low-cost license (around $20 street price.) That is a feature we wish Supermicro would include with their systems across product lines.
This pricing differential for a serviceable iKVM functionality is a big deal in this segment. Adding a $200 license to a server can add 10% or more in the Intel Xeon E-2100 platform costs. Supermicro’s iKVM feature is extremely popular due to its inclusion with the server.
Supermicro A2SDi-8C+-HLN4F Topology
One area that we are keenly aware of today, and will be increasingly so with future multi-chip packages, is system topology. Luckily, the Intel Atom C3000 series has an extremely simple system topology.
The Supermicro A2SDi-8C+-HLN4F functionality is based around the Intel Atom C3758 SoC. That means that all devices see their roots at the SoC instead of from downstream northbridges.
Next, we are going to take a look at our Intel Atom C3758 benchmarks, we are then going to focus on power consumption then conclude with our final words on the processors.
How does this compare to the Epyc 3000 series on a performance/$ aspect?
Thanks for mentioning the H-TF (10GbE) version. I guess there wasn’t room for a couple 1GbE too. But only ~$100 more for 10GbE doesn’t seem so bad (per Amazon).
This one is nice, since it has the 2x 8643 headers. One PciE slot… I’d have to decide between a M.2 sled or 10GbE… though I wouldn’t get many M.2 drives, most likely just one extra 🙁
Interesting little product. I like the twin SFF 8643 ports. I would like to see them progress to PCIe 4 becuase there are time when using two RAID 10 Vols on a Areca 12G 1883ix-24 that I will saturate the 12G bandwidth.
Park they can’t just progress. It’s limited by the Intel chip. No Intel chips have PCIe4 to this day
Any idea if the C2000 bug still existing on this new platform? I am considering about this but worry about C2000 bug still “carry out” to C3000 platform.
I own this board and I’m not able to reach 14W in idle. My result is 21W with only IPMI connected, one SATA SSD and one RAM module, so I contacted Supermicro and this is their answer:
“we do not have figures for the 8C model but we do have them for 12C model which is also 25W TDP.
The idle consumption was 26.19W, your result of 21W seems normal to us.
We do not know how serverthehome got those figures.”
So how do you meassured 14W? I’m very disappointed about the idle power consumption because the predecessor had a similar low consumption and now its much more (for a Mini ITX project).
Could you provide a bit more information as to how you test power consumption? You specify the measuring device, but not the PSU used (its efficiency obviously affects the test), and any connected peripherals.
Where to buy it?