Juzzotec Posted January 31, 2016 Share Posted January 31, 2016 Hi guys I'm looking to upgrade my current simple build to a Skylake VM capable server. Up until today, I thought that VT-d with IO was only available on the Xeon and Server class CPU's. After reading through the forum, I tend to think I can achieve my goal with a desktop class cpu and motherboard combo. Is this right? Can anyone recommend a tried and testing build which passes all IO's without any patches. I'm probably thinking of the i5 6400/6500. I only want to run 1 VM so hoping this will work. Thanks, any help is appreciated Quote Link to comment
Juzzotec Posted January 31, 2016 Author Share Posted January 31, 2016 After doing a bit more research, the ASRock Z170 Extreme6+ manual shows a screenshot of VT-D capability. And the Intel website states the i5 6400 and 6500 both support Vt-x and Vt-d. Quote Link to comment
Jim van der Harst Posted January 31, 2016 Share Posted January 31, 2016 Goodday KidCastro, it's two ways: CPU should support vt-x and vt-d and the motherboards as well. THere is a site that's lists the intel chipsets that support VT-d as VT-x is supported almost every motherboard. I'l show you the link: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/boards-and-kits/desktop-boards/000005758.html?wapkw=vt-d+support The following Intel® Desktop Boards support Intel VT with Directed I/O: Chipset Desktop Board H87, Q87, Z87 DH87MC, DH87RL, DQ87PG B85 DB85FL X79 DX79SI, DX79SR, DX79TO H77, Q77, Z77 DH77DF, DH77EB, DH77KC, DQ77CP, DQ77KB, DQ77MK, DZ77BH-55K, DZ77GA-70K, DZ77RE-75K, DZ77SL-50K B75, Z75 DB75EN, DZ75ML-45K Q67 DQ67EP, DQ67OW, DQ67SW H61 DH61AGL Q57 DQ57TM, DQ57TML Q45 DQ45CB, DQ45EK Q35 DQ35JO, DQ35MP I dont see Z170 on that..... It's possible that the above list is outdated. Drop a question at ASRock support for the correct answer. If the manual says VT-d it probably will Quote Link to comment
Juzzotec Posted January 31, 2016 Author Share Posted January 31, 2016 Goodday KidCastro, it's two ways: CPU should support vt-x and vt-d and the motherboards as well. THere is a site that's lists the intel chipsets that support VT-d as VT-x is supported almost every motherboard. I'l show you the link: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/boards-and-kits/desktop-boards/000005758.html?wapkw=vt-d+support The following Intel® Desktop Boards support Intel VT with Directed I/O: Chipset Desktop Board H87, Q87, Z87 DH87MC, DH87RL, DQ87PG B85 DB85FL X79 DX79SI, DX79SR, DX79TO H77, Q77, Z77 DH77DF, DH77EB, DH77KC, DQ77CP, DQ77KB, DQ77MK, DZ77BH-55K, DZ77GA-70K, DZ77RE-75K, DZ77SL-50K B75, Z75 DB75EN, DZ75ML-45K Q67 DQ67EP, DQ67OW, DQ67SW H61 DH61AGL Q57 DQ57TM, DQ57TML Q45 DQ45CB, DQ45EK Q35 DQ35JO, DQ35MP I dont see Z170 on that..... It's possible that the above list is outdated. Drop a question at ASRock support for the correct answer. If the manual says VT-d it probably will Thanks so much for all that info, yes I pulled up that list as well. Is there any list of builds that are successful with Skylake? Has anyone done it with unraid on here. I can't see a build log section. Hoping to copy a known working configuration. Also, am I right in saying that the 6400 and 6500 support vtx and vtd? Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 31, 2016 Share Posted January 31, 2016 With earlier CPUs I/O pass-through was provided by the chipset, not the CPU. Any 4th gen or later Core architecture CPU that has vt-d support will work just fine with the chipsets that support them. Note that the list above also doesn't include the x97 chipsets or any of the SkyLake chipsets => all of which work just fine with vt-d. In other words -- Yes, your SkyLake system will work just fine as long as the CPU has vt-d support. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 31, 2016 Share Posted January 31, 2016 ... Also, am I right in saying that the 6400 and 6500 support vtx and vtd? Yes ... you can check support for any CPU by looking at Intel's ARK site e.g. for the 6400: http://ark.intel.com/products/88185/Intel-Core-i5-6400-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz and for the 6500: http://ark.intel.com/products/88184/Intel-Core-i5-6500-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz Just look at the "Advanced Technologies" section to confirm what is/isn't supported Quote Link to comment
Juzzotec Posted January 31, 2016 Author Share Posted January 31, 2016 With earlier CPUs I/O pass-through was provided by the chipset, not the CPU. Any 4th gen or later Core architecture CPU that has vt-d support will work just fine with the chipsets that support them. Note that the list above also doesn't include the x97 chipsets or any of the SkyLake chipsets => all of which work just fine with vt-d. In other words -- Yes, your SkyLake system will work just fine as long as the CPU has vt-d support. ... Also, am I right in saying that the 6400 and 6500 support vtx and vtd? Yes ... you can check support for any CPU by looking at Intel's ARK site e.g. for the 6400: http://ark.intel.com/products/88185/Intel-Core-i5-6400-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz and for the 6500: http://ark.intel.com/products/88184/Intel-Core-i5-6500-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz Just look at the "Advanced Technologies" section to confirm what is/isn't supported Thanks man, appreciate the re-assurance... so I'm definetely thinking ASRock Z170 Extreme6+ and i5 6400 Any way of confirming if the onboard SATA is compatible, I can tell they use 2 x different chipsets. - 6 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors by Intel® Z170, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10, Intel® Rapid Storage Technology 14 and Intel® Smart Response Technology), NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug - 2 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors by ASMedia ASM1061, support NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug ASMedia ASM1061 compatible? Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 31, 2016 Share Posted January 31, 2016 Can't say for sure about the two extra ports, but other motherboards with AsMedia controllers don't have any issues, so I'd expect that to be true with this board as well. The chipset ports will certainly be okay. Quote Link to comment
SpaceInvaderOne Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 I have just upgraded my unraid to i7-6700 cpu and ASRock - Z170M Extreme4 motherboard. Similar mboard and chip as you plan to. I have finally got everything working as i want now but did have a few problems which i thought i would point out to you in case it helps you when you build yours. Firstly I have 3 pcie x16 slots and planned to run 3 graphics cards. I had to enable PCIe ACS Override to get this working as without it the motherboard grouped the graphics cards on the first and second slot in the same iommu group. Both cards would work this way if only one in use at a time. If i tried to use each on a different vm at the same time the second vm to be started wouldnt work. Well the aci override sorted this out and i can run 2 gpus at once passed to different vms. However the 3rd slot with or without the aci override, the mb would always group the usb 3.1 (USB controller: ASMedia Technology) in with it in same iommu group. So i couldnt use the third slot for a gpu. I could try to stubb the controller and try that way, but at the moment i use that usb for my unraid, and passthough the other controller on the board to my windows vm. (the reason i do it this way is because i want to passthrough the controller that has the usb3 ports on the front of my case) My second problem was an acpi error. Jan 24 21:20:34 Prime kernel: ACPI Error: Method parse/execution failed [\_GPE._L6F] (Node ffff8804854732d0), AE_NOT_FOUND (20150410/psparse-536) Jan 24 21:20:34 Prime kernel: ACPI Exception: AE_NOT_FOUND, while evaluating GPE method [_L6F] (20150410/evgpe-592) Now this didnt effect the unraid booting. However the error messages keep getting generated constantly, even after the initial burst of them at boot up. So this filled my syslog and caused my cpu to be using 15% at idle when running unraid. This problem seems to be most likely a bios error which hopefully will be addressed by asrock. Also it may possibly be because skylake support was only put into linux kernal 4.3. and when unraid kernal is updated maybe this error will not happen. Anyway I tried disabling the acpi in my sysconfig and surely the error didnt occur. But disabling the acpi disables iommu so this wasnt an acceptable solution. so i tried acpi=ht which as i found on https://01.org/linux-acpi/documentation/debug-how-isolate-linux-acpi-issues acpi=ht the most like "acpi=off", disables all of ACPI except what is needed to enumerate processors. If acpi=off works and acpi=ht fails, then the issue is in the ACPI table parsing code itself, or perhaps the SMP code. using acpi=ht had no effect so this seemed to indicate the above. My problem had been reported on https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=105491 The solution was to disable the gpe6f You do this with this command echo disable > /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe6F You add it to your go file. Or just to test ssh or telnet to your sever and run it there. Anyway i have everything running perfectly now, but anyone thing of a skylake cpu and a z170 based asrock motherboard this info may help you. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 I wonder if these are AsRock related or Z170 issues => I suspect they may be Z170. The best choice for a system that you want to pass a LOT of devices through to VM's is to use an E5 series Xeon. The socket 2011 server-class boards that support the E5's have far more PCIe lanes and much better IOMMU support. Quote Link to comment
spylex Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 I am interested in building a SkyLake system, but have yet to find the 'ideal' motherboard.. Is the wishlist too difficult? Mobo with 8x SATA, 1xm.2 and 2x PCI-E 16x, with separate IOMMU? Quote Link to comment
00b5 Posted February 2, 2016 Share Posted February 2, 2016 I'll just add, that even some skylake i3s now have vt-d support, so the price point is getting lower if you don't mind a dual core (with vt-d) support. I think the i3-6100 even has HT. http://ark.intel.com/products/90729/Intel-Core-i3-6100-Processor-3M-Cache-3_70-GHz Not bad for $130 (microcenter has it even cheaper, and a $20 discount for getting a combo). Quote Link to comment
HellDiverUK Posted February 2, 2016 Share Posted February 2, 2016 All desktop i3 chips have had Hyperthreading since at least Sandy Bridge. Generally for desktops: Celeron: Dual core with limited cache Pentium: Dual core i3: Dual core with HT i5: Quad core with turbo i7: Quad core with HT and turbo. There are exceptions, particularly when Mobile and Embedded chips are involved. Quote Link to comment
spencers Posted February 2, 2016 Share Posted February 2, 2016 I'll just add, that even some skylake i3s now have vt-d support, so the price point is getting lower if you don't mind a dual core (with vt-d) support. Well holy crap! That's awesome! Quote Link to comment
zero_koop Posted February 9, 2016 Share Posted February 9, 2016 I'll just add, that even some skylake i3s now have vt-d support, so the price point is getting lower if you don't mind a dual core (with vt-d) support. Well holy crap! That's awesome! I'm curious, what features of skylake are attractive to an UnRAID build? This is an honest question because I know very little about CPUs down at this level of detail. Quote Link to comment
Whatever Posted February 9, 2016 Share Posted February 9, 2016 Vt-d and ECC support by the way. Quote Link to comment
spencers Posted February 9, 2016 Share Posted February 9, 2016 Vt-d and ECC support by the way. Even better! Quote Link to comment
zero_koop Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 Vt-d and ECC support by the way. OK thanks. Some quick research tells me that Vt-d does some magic to make VMs better. VMs are one of the things I want to play around with soon, but currently have no particular use for. So all Skylake processors have this technology? What about the previous generation? Does any motherboard that supports Skylake processors also support Vt-d or should I be on the lookout for that? ECC (Error Correcting Code) for RAM on the other hand is very cool but seems to only be available for Xeon processors and that is out of my price range. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 ECC (Error Correcting Code) for RAM on the other hand is very cool but seems to only be available for Xeon processors and that is out of my price range. Don't be so sure of that. You simply need a server-class motherboard [e.g. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182999 ] ... and if you want to stay on the low-end processor-wise you could use a Skylake i3 (the i5's and i7's don't support ECC). An i3-6100 is very close in performance to the i5-6400 you were looking at [PassMark 5512 vs. 6525] ... or you could go with a Xeon 1200 v5 series CPU for higher performance (although these will add to your cost) Quote Link to comment
HellDiverUK Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 The issue is the new C236 Xeon boards don't support the i3 chips. For ECC on Skylake you MUST use C236 chipset, and that means you MUST use a Xeon E3v5. The i3 chips may support ECC, but there's no motherboard platform that does currently. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 ... The issue is the new C236 Xeon boards don't support the i3 chips ?? What makes you think that? I'm not aware of any C232 or C236 board that does not support the 6th Gen i3's (Skylake). The one I noted above [superMicro MBD-X11SSM-O ] absolutely supports i3's. Quote Link to comment
spylex Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C236D2I Looks like this doesn't. Any non server motherboards supporting 6 SATA + m.2? Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C236D2I Looks like this doesn't. Any non server motherboards supporting 6 SATA + m.2? Sure it does => click on "CPU Support List" to see the processors it supports ... which clearly includes the SkyLake i3's. Quote Link to comment
spylex Posted February 12, 2016 Share Posted February 12, 2016 I clearly can't see! I have emailed to ask availability of this motherboard. I have also found a suitably sized SSD that comes up to 512GB sizes, but it is 3 times the price of 256GB one. http://www.transcend-info.com/Products/No-645 On the other hand, i have not found an el-cheapo ITX board that has m.2 and 6x SATA... Anyone had better luck? Quote Link to comment
scorcho99 Posted March 3, 2016 Share Posted March 3, 2016 VT-d has been available on garden variety i5 non-Ks since Sandybridge at least. I think starting with i5 4000 series at least some of the K models also had it. Skylake is even better here than you guys are letting on though. The lowly Pentium G4400 and a Skylake celeron no one can actually find even have it. I guess Intel decided not to be so greedy this go around with at least one feature. Quote Link to comment
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