Supermicro X11SDV-4C-TLN2F Review with Intel Xeon D-2123IT

By
Patrick Kennedy
-
22

Supermicro X11SDV-4C-TLN2F Management

These days, out of band management is a standard feature on servers. Supermicro offers an industry standard solution for traditional management, including a WebGUI. The company is also supporting the Redfish management standard. On this motherboard, we see similar features as we would across the Supermicro X11 range. That means whether you are using an embedded motherboard or a 4U storage server, you will have a similar look and feel to the management experience.

Supermicro X11 IPMI GUI
Supermicro X11 IPMI GUI

In the latest generation of Supermicro IPMI is a HTML5 iKVM. One no longer needs to use a Java console to get remote KVM access to their server.

Supermicro X11 HTML5 IKVM
Supermicro X11 HTML5 IKVM

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.

At STH, we do all of our testing in remote data centers. Having the ability to remote console into the machines means we do not need to make trips to the data center to service the lab even if BIOS changes or manual OS installs are required.

Next, we will look at the performance and power consumption of the Supermicro X11SDV-4C-TLN2F solution.

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22 COMMENTS

  1. Can’t wait for AMD’s Embedded Epyc to hit the market. Hopefully that will drive perfromance plus I/O up and prices down.

  2. I don’t really understand why idle watts are so high. I would almost guess SoC doesn’t reach its deepest power saving states, which should be fixed after kernel support matures.

  3. I second the yearn for AMD Epyc Embedded boards. Beside that, looking at the charts above, the best bang per watt and bucket still seems to be at Atom C3955. At least for my usage scenario and feature set needs.

  4. @Jyrki:
    I would say kernel support should be pretty solid since it’s based on the Skylake Platform and Intel usually gets their drivers in pretty early. Maybe using acpi-cpufreq instead of intel pstate helps, I usually use the schedutil governor on my Intel devices.
    However I don’t know how many of the other platforms also have out of band management, I believe that AST2500 is also drawing some power.

    What I would really like to see is a similar platform that offers more PCIe lanes and/or better networking in the SoC.

  8. Hello Patrick,

    Thank you for the review! I have a quick question for you – do you think that a GPU would fit in the PCIe slot? And if so, is the slot in the right position for a typical mITX case?

    Thanks!

  10. Hi Patrick, all,

    Would anyone know what the status of the X11SDV-4C-TLN2F mobo is as of June 2018? It’s quite hard to find anywhere, and some stores even listed as discontinued.

    Is this a product that you’d still advise buying?

    Thanks for any help!

  12. Hey Patrick,

    Thanks for the quick reply! So do I, but at wildly varying prices, and unavailable at some major retailers like Amazon, with some of them listing the item as discontinued. That’s why I was wondering if there was something wrong with the item, e.g. if it’d been recalled due to some defect or something, because I find it odd that Supermicro would discontinue an X11 mobo (if it actually did) when most (if not all) X10 mobos are still available for purchase almost everywhere.

    Do you happen to know anything about that? Thanks!

  13. Hi Juan – I have not heard of a D-2100 issue to date. Amazon is not a primary retail outlet for SM gear. Often if you look at secondary retailer pricing it is wildly different.

  14. Hi Patrick,

    Thanks for the info and confirmation. I feel more confident now purchasing this mobo.

  15. Hi Patrick,

    If I may throw another question at you about this board after a while… what case did you use it in? I wanted to use it for a cold storage & backups NAS (i.e. low activity, hardly any more than receiving hourly ZFS replication streams and bi-monthly pool scrubbing), so I was hoping to put it in Supermicro’s CSE-721TQ-250B Mini-Tower, which I understand you’ve reviewed separately. But Supermicro itself told me this was a bad idea because that case would not be able to handle all of the undissipated heat generated by the built-in chip & the provided passive cooling, recommending that I stick to prior generation’s X10SDV-4C+-TLN4F equivalent, which is actively cooled. I don’t care much for 4 NICS, but I do for 10GbE networking (and storage performance, which if I read you right in this article, you say it’s been improved in the X11).

    So, with that in mind, what chassis would you recommend for this board? Or, alternatively, what alternative board would you suggest?

    Thanks!

  17. For those looking for a homelab solution I would recommend waiting for the X11SDV-4C-TP8F to be released, hopefully for around the same price as it’s ITX brother. You’ll get significantly better features at the uATX form factor

  18. Quick question – since this doesn’t have M.2 how exactly do you hook up internal SSD storage via Ocusync? Do you just get a 2.5″ SSD and order the Supermicro OCuLink to U.2 PCIE SFF-8639 with Power Cable (CBL-SAST-0956)? If so then you need to buy the super pricy SSD with u.2 connection because most have SATA? or do you need to do the above cable AND buy an M.2 plus StarTech.com M.2 to U.2 Adapter? Seems hokey.

  19. U.2 is the better standard. It allows features like NVMe hot swap and backplanes. You can also get power loss protection in large capacity SSDs with U.2.

    You are right that not supporting M.2 directly means using consumer SSDs in your server is harder. U.2 is the better standard for a server. Price wise, check the STH forums. Usually one can get U.2 drives for about the same as M.2 but with more features.

  20. I am using CSE-721TQ-250B and my biggest issue right now is actually the power. The case doesn’t come with an 8pin ATX. Just 2 4-pins. It will boot with just the 4pin plugged in but it keeps having the server shut off randomly.

    Is there a DC PSU that is recommended?
    Would the stock 250w power supply be enough for this board?

  21. i just want 5000-7000+ passmark CPU on a dual NIC board that PFsense will run on that doesn’t cost a kidney.

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