Haswell Supermicro Boards


Recommended Posts

what board and cpu are you planing on getting pro, i'm going to do an esxi haswell build myself

The CPU is likely going to be the E3-1230v3 and the motherboard I am not sure of yet.  Going to be doing the research today and make my choice tonight most likely.

 

I will update the thread once I figure out which one fits best

Link to comment

I just finished up my Haswell ESXi build with a Supermicro X10SLM+-F (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182823).  I chose the E3-1240v3 Xeon CPU and 2 sticks of Kingston 8GB DIMM's (kvr16e11/8i).  I will be adding another 2 sticks of memory next month to bring it up to 32GB.

 

For the most part, the build was simple and straight forward.  If you haven't read about it already the i210 Intel NIC chipset is not supported off of the ESXi 5.1 ISO, so you'll need to roll the NIC drivers into the media (http://www.servethehome.com/install-vmware-esxi-5x-intel-i210-intel-i350-ethernet-adapters/) - this is easier than it sounds and takes about 5 minutes.  I went with the X10SLM+-F for the 2 i210 NIC's - the X10SLM-F has 1 i210 and 1 i217 NIC, which is not yet supported by ESXi, but might be in the near future.

 

The motherboard I received from Newegg had a problem with 2 of the DIMM slots - it would only recognize memory in 2 of the 4 slots, so I had to do a cross-ship replacement with Supermicro.  They over-nighted a new board and I was up and running the next day.  Working with Supermicro's tech support was one of the easiest and best experiences I've had with tech support, so I have no issues recommending their products. 

 

I upgraded my original ESXi server, which already had unRAID virtualized, so I was just doing a motherboard/cpu swap and fresh ESXi install.  My previous build was a Q9400 on an Intel S3210SHLC board, which is still pretty nice.  The new Haswell build is much quicker in all of my VM tasks, but I don't notice it much with unRAID (not that I expected to).

 

There is one other board I considered, which is made by Intel - S1200v3rpl.  It does have 4 x8/x4 slots, but I could not find this board anywhere for a reasonable price.

 

Link to comment

ftp, did you have to add a video card? i'm wondering why you didn't pick a cpu with onboard graphics?

 

Supermicro motherboards that have "-F" at the end have IPMI built in which allows nearly complete remote access to the machine over network interface (video, keyboard/mouse, even power & BIOS control)... Thus, no need for separate video functionality. I know several who have setup their servers hardware wise without ever attaching a monitor, put them away in the basement doing all the software install/setup remotely and never needed to see the hardware again for years.

Link to comment

ftp, did you have to add a video card? i'm wondering why you didn't pick a cpu with onboard graphics?

 

Supermicro motherboards that have "-F" at the end have IPMI built in which allows nearly complete remote access to the machine over network interface (video, keyboard/mouse, even power & BIOS control)... Thus, no need for separate video functionality. I know several who have setup their servers hardware wise without ever attaching a monitor, put them away in the basement doing all the software install/setup remotely and never needed to see the hardware again for years.

 

This answer pretty much summed up why I didn't go with the 1245v3.  If at some point I want to use the 1240v3 CPU in a workstation I can and most likely there will be far better graphics options available by that time.

 

The system is humming along very nicely with 5-6 VM's running and I just ordered the other 16GB of memory to install this week.

 

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.