May 21, 201313 yr I had a lightning storm the other week which took out my motherboard on my server. It was just an old game-rig that I kept filling up with HDD's as I was running out of space. I have however recently replaced the powersupply. Along with the HDD's is the only thing that I bringing along to my new build. A build that I would love to have some feedback on: Did I forget anything? What should I keep in my mind? Errors? Alternative parts? ETC. I live in Sweden, which is making it neigh impossible to buy from the US. Customs and shipping costs and RMA will be more difficult. All of the EU is possible though. A bit hesitant regarding the UK as they are by far the more expensive when it comes to shipping fees. Anyways. I am taking the plunge into ESXI and running multiple servers from the same hardware. I also like the idea to be be able to have unlimitied storage, so I am going the 24 HDD route. This is the PSU I already have: SeaSonic X760 (SS-760KM) 760W ATX12V V2.3/EPS 12V V2.91, 80Plus Gold Certified, Active PFC Power Supply And this will be my shopping list: Case: 24-bay-Hotswap-rackmount-chassis-norco-RPC-4224-p/case-xcase-rm424 at 424€ The case is nearly half my budget, alternatives are very welcome here. Motherboard: Supermicro-X9SCM-IIF at 198€ After reading some threads this seem to be a popular board. I am open to alternatives as I am having a bit trouble finding this in stock. And the above re-seller which I am thinking of using have the item listed in the wrong section which is somewhat worrying. Also, what does the -O at the end mean? CPU Intel Xeon E3-1220V2 - 3,1GHz Box Sockel 1155 at 183€ This is what I want right? Memory 2 x Kingston 8 GB ECC DDR3 DIMM SDRAM KVR16E11/8 at 130€ These are the ones I want? Ill start with 16gb and add 16 more later this year. On the site they have divided ECC and reg. ECC. What does the "reg." mean? Controller-card Supermicro-Add-on-Card-AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 at 102€ This seem to be one of the go to card regarding price/value and compatibility. Please enlighten me if there are any good alternatives as I need some sort of "hack" to get this working under ESXI? What hack btw? And thats it I guess? I have 6 HDD's ready to and will add more on a monthly basis. Once I hit the max on current setup, I will add another SAS2LP? Hmm... I need some cabling and one or more SDD for the VM´s? 854€ before p&p is ok.. My budget is 1100 btw. My goal is to use this as: 1 unraid server 1 ubuntu server 1 pfsense 1 windows variant of some sort 1 test enviromnent.. zfs perhaps.. Am I good to go? Please give feedback. If YOU know of any good cheap webshops in Europe please share! Any other feedback would be awesome as well. Thanks for looking! Also, if you find alternatives on that very site, please link!
May 21, 201313 yr By all means I'm no expert but I recently was looking at a new config as well.. From that experience I have some possible adjustments for you to consider: - I'd replace the E3-1220V2 with a E3-1230V2, it is a bit more expensive but has a better value for money ratio (at least over here it does). Check the prices and performance (cpu benchmarks). - As for the case I had a similar problem. I went for the Lian-Li D-8000 http://goo.gl/ab3Z8. It's big and less expensive..
May 21, 201313 yr If you want HyperThreading then I suggest the E3-1230 v2 as the E3-1220 v2 does not support it. Otherwise the CPU should work with your MB and ESXi just fine. The memory shows up on the Kingston site as working with the X9SCM-iiF so that should be fine. I don't have experience with the controller but the earlier version works for me and the SAS2LP-MV8 has been reported by others to work so you should be fine there.
May 21, 201313 yr Read this thread (r.e. JerryV's new build) ... there was a good dialogue there that may be useful in deciding just what parts to buy: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=27351.0 The Lian-Li D8000 Jerry used is an AWESOME case
May 22, 201313 yr Author I changed the cpu and placed an order. Also added SSD for datastore for the wm's, Still undecided on the chassis.. but leaning towards norco again..
May 22, 201313 yr I changed the cpu and placed an order. Also added SSD for datastore for the wm's, Still undecided on the chassis.. but leaning towards norco again.. The "best" chassis depends very much on where you're going to put it. If you have a rack, clearly you should get a rackmount chassis. If not, then a tower may be a better choice. etc. In general a rackmount chassis will be louder, since the fans are typically smaller and are usually high-rpm fans designed for use in server room environments, where noise is secondary to cooling capability. A tower can use larger fans, which can thus run at lower rpms while still providing ample cooling.
May 30, 201313 yr Author Parts have started to arrive. I am getting excited. However, now that I have read up some more on esxi and pass-through: Once I go the esxi-route and have my server virtualized, the 6 sata-ports on the MB can only be used for datastore for the VM's? I can't use any of the ports for the actual servers right? As I can't pass them through to Esxi? Or are there ways around this? Thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this. /coupas
May 30, 201313 yr You can hook drives up to those ports and RDM the drives to your unraid VM but this is really not recommended. In an ESXi setup its best to just write off the ports as being good for anything other than datastores. You're going to really need to use controller cards for disk access to any VMs. I've got 3 in my setup. Two IBM M1015s for my unraid setup and an SASLP-MV8 for my OpenIndiana based ZFS pool that acts as a datastore for all my other VMs. So I only have two disks actually hooked up to my onboard SATA ports. A SSD that is split between acting as a host cache for ESXi and a datastore for my OpenIndiana VM; and a 500GB laptop drive that stores ISOs and a backup of my OpenIndiana VM.
May 30, 201313 yr Author Thanks. At the moment I have the SAS2LP coming my way. The disks that I will hook up to that will be for a virtualized unraid. And my other VM's will read and write files to to unraid of course. And I will to start with have a samsung 840 pro hooked up to MB's ports for datastore for the WM's. To summarize: Esxi will run from a usb-stick. Virt. Unraid will run from a usb stick Virt. Windows 8 machine from the datastore disc Virt. Windows server will run from datastore Virt. Linux distro will run from datastore Virt. test environment will run from datastore. I will have the above hardware, and to start with 2 WD red, 3 Samsung g (all 3tb), 3 more random hdd. All those hdd's will be on the sas2lp card, that is passed through to Esxi and utilized by the virt. Unraid. The lone SSD will be hooked up to the motherboard. Am I good to go or am I missing something fundamental in my setup? Thanks for looking.
May 30, 201313 yr Am I good to go or am I missing something fundamental in my setup? Looks good to go. I'm sure it's obvious, but "play" a bit with ESXi before you get too ambitious.
May 30, 201313 yr Author Good tip. It's obvious that Esxi is quite advanced and I will make a lot of errors setting it all up. But it will be a good learning process. I just hope that I won't lose all my data in the process hehe. THanks everyone for the feedback. I might start a build/progress log if there is some interest.. Case won't get here until wednesday.. I ended up with the x-case Norco mod. Will review once it gets here. So the building will be on wed/thu, and first Esxi install on thu. Can you tell I'm excited?!
May 30, 201313 yr One more thing I'd point out is if you plan to have all or most of those VMs running at once, only 16GB of RAM might be pushing it. You may want to get a third 8GB stick for 24GB.
June 6, 201313 yr Author Parts have arrived. I have built it. And is in the progress of running preclears.. However, I am challenged by network interfaces.. My mobo have two: Intel® 82574L .. one is found by esxi and ends up as a e1000 interface that I can use in my vm's.. I did however passed the other one through to the unraid box, but it's not showing up anywhere. Any thoughts on that? Any of you with the same mobo care to chime in? I am also in the midst of starting a new thread in UCDforum for more in depth conversation about my setup. Thanks in advance for looking.
June 6, 201313 yr Parts have arrived. I have built it. And is in the progress of running preclears.. However, I am challenged by network interfaces.. My mobo have two: Intel® 82574L .. one is found by esxi and ends up as a e1000 interface that I can use in my vm's.. I did however passed the other one through to the unraid box, but it's not showing up anywhere. Any thoughts on that? Any of you with the same mobo care to chime in? I am also in the midst of starting a new thread in UCDforum for more in depth conversation about my setup. Thanks in advance for looking. I would either remove the virtual nic and use the passed through one for unRAID or remove the passed through one and use the virtual nic. I am using both methods with my 2 unRAID servers I have on 2 ESXi boxes. Using multiple nics with unRAID is not something that is done by default. I believe you can use multiple with unRAID by changing configuration files but I've never done that. I have a single nic with my unRAID VM on a real nic and the other VM a virtual nic as I said in earlier sentence.
June 6, 201313 yr Parts have arrived. I have built it. And is in the progress of running preclears.. However, I am challenged by network interfaces.. My mobo have two: Intel® 82574L .. one is found by esxi and ends up as a e1000 interface that I can use in my vm's.. I did however passed the other one through to the unraid box, but it's not showing up anywhere. Any thoughts on that? Any of you with the same mobo care to chime in? I am also in the midst of starting a new thread in UCDforum for more in depth conversation about my setup. Thanks in advance for looking. Don't pass the NIC through. Use the vmxnet3 virtual NIC on all your VMs if they support it. This gives you a 10 gigabit connection between your VMs. iperf speed test results between my unraid server vm and an ubuntu VM, both using a vmxnet3 virtual NIC: ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to 10.0.1.4, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 22.9 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 3] local 10.0.1.7 port 37019 connected with 10.0.1.4 port 5001 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 12.4 GBytes 10.6 Gbits/sec
June 7, 201313 yr Why not go with the new series Adapter HBA cards recently released (and no these aren't earlier Raid variants, these are cheaper).
June 7, 201313 yr Why not go with the new series Adapter HBA cards recently released (and no these aren't earlier Raid variants, these are cheaper). What cards are you talking about?
June 7, 201313 yr the new series Adapter HBA cards recently released ... What series are you talking about? Since PMC bought Adaptec there hasn't been a lot of movement in that line ... except the new Series 7 HBA's, which are definitely NOT cheaper !!
June 7, 201313 yr Author Up and running! I will start a new thread in UCD, but I can tell you that everything worked out of the box more or less. I did not need to apply any hacks or workarounds on the SAS2LP-card. It is however showing as unknown - unkown in Esxi.
June 7, 201313 yr I believe you got to do the same hacks for have to do to get the SASLP-MV8 working. See the Atlas thread for instructions.
June 7, 201313 yr Author But the disks are showing? And the array started.. I havent transferred any files yet though, but I was under the expression that the hack was used to even have the disks to show up? No?
June 7, 201313 yr NO the hack was to prevent PINK screens in ESXi - similar to a BSOD in Windows. I do not know if the SAS2LP requires it or not (I don't have one) but the SASLP definitely DOES. It is certainly possible that it doesn't. I have a several HighPoint controllers and a Sil3132 controller and they do NOT need the hack.
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