Supermicro X7SPA L/H/HF ATOM serverboards (Level 1 Tested)

[Joe L.]

Gary,

 

It has nothing to do with the speed of the flash drive memory itself, but if it is being initially detected/treated by the BIOS as a USB-1 device instead of a USB-2 device.

 

One is read much more slowly than the other.

[GaryMaster]

Gary,

 

It has nothing to do with the speed of the flash drive memory itself, but if it is being initially detected/treated by the BIOS as a USB-1 device or a USB-2 device.

 

One is read much more slowly than the other.

 

Hi Joe -

 

My notes were in regard to Tom's comment that the firefly is "not the fastest drive out there".  I do realize that the excessive slowness seen in my own system (and possibly the HF performance the admin is seeing) is likely due to the device being treated as USB v1.

[aiden]

With only the motherboard connected to the PSU:

27W - During linux boot.

25W - At linux console

28-30W - Running memtest (reading bounces around depending on test).

 

With motherboard and Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller plugged in the PCI-E x4 slot:

36W - During linux boot.

34W - At linux console.

 

With above configuration & 12 hard drives (see below for hdd types):

137W - Idle (drives spinning but no I/O taking place)

160W - Parity sync in process

53W - All drives spun down

304W - Highest observed reading during spinup of all drives

 

Thank you for taking the time to do this measurement Tom.  I attempted it earlier, but obviously the broken meter that I had borrowed was broken.  I do not own the adequate tools necessary to do what you did, but I suspected my readings were quite high, and you've proven this board sips power very sparingly.  I am curious about your 300+W reading on all drives spinning, because the Corsair 620HX I have in my server is rated for 170W on the 5v rail.  Am I missing something about hard drive power requirements of the power supply?

 

I am concerned at the 6 minute boot time you are seeing for the Atom. can anyone confirm / deny this? Also I am annoyed that the Zotac is easily available to buy here but the Supermicro is not.

 

I have had this board in my server for over a month now and no matter how many different times I boot it, it never takes 6 minutes.  From cold start to seeing the login screen is never more than a minute.  I will time it next time.

[GaryMaster]

For anyone reading my original comments about the 6 minute load time - I am convinced that something is causing the USB flash on this board to read at USB 1.0 speeds.  My board is NOT the Supermicro, but rather an ECS Atom 330 board.  I don't want to scare anyone away from this excellent platform due to problems with my specific hardware.

[aiden]

Thank you for the clarification Gary. 

[limetech]

I am curious about your 300+W reading on all drives spinning, because the Corsair 620HX I have in my server is rated for 170W on the 5v rail.  Am I missing something about hard drive power requirements of the power supply?

 

The 300W reading was the highest I observed on the Kill-A-Watt display.  I did this by clicking SpinDown... wait about a minute, then clicking SpinUp and watch the meter - repeat about 30 times.

 

So 300W, for this set of drives, is about how much peak power is used during spin up only.  Once the drives are spun up, power use goes way down.

 

For most drives, the critical power rail is +12V, not +5V, which is why you want a PSU with single-rail +12V.

[tractng]

 

 

For the people that ordered this board, did you have it "drop ship" from SM?  I got an ETA from SM for 3/9 (I ordered from wiredzone).

 

Did you get the tracking number?  If so, was it from SM or the vendor you bought from?

 

Wiredzone is tired of me calling them, so they forward the reply to SM.

 

tnt

[Shurik]

I have had this board in my server for over a month now and no matter how many different times I boot it, it never takes 6 minutes.  From cold start to seeing the login screen is never more than a minute.  I will time it next time.

 

Aiden, I am looking at building a system now and I was considering this board after reading your posts (if it is at all possible to procure it), but I had few questions if you don't mind, since you've had this board for a while now. I haven't used unRaid before, so all of this is very new to me as I'm looking to move away from hardware RAID5 solution I have now.

 

1. Do you use unRaid for anything but nas (nzbget, sabnzbd, anything else)? I need something with low power consumption (electricity here is quite expensive), but I want to be able to run few extra things on unRaid box. If I cannot have a little extra room for addons then I'd rather go i3 route (apparently not that bad of a power hog either).

2. How many drives do you have running off this board? I might be wrong, but I believe that one of the new PCI-e Supermicro SATA controllers is now supported by unRaid. Do you, by any chance, have that as well?

3. Did you have hard time getting correct memory for the board - I run across quite a few reviews on the internet with complaints about memory issues with Supermicro boards (not this one in particular).

4. How does IPMI works for you? Again - read quite a few reviews about issues with that on Supermicro (dropped connectivity, instability). I've never worked with IPMI so I wonder if this is something that you cannot live without once you try it.

5. How does having lower level CPU affect parity checks? I'm planning on having about 6 data drive to start with (8TB total) and wonder what sort of performance hits I might have to take from time to time.

 

Thanks!

[tractng]

 

I just got the board today!!  Going to install a few different of NAS to evaluate.

 

Is unraid free, up til how many drives free?

 

How many GB of rams are you using?

 

Tnt

[Joe L.]

 

I just got the board today!!  Going to install a few different of NAS to evaluate.

 

Is unraid free, up til how many drives free?

 

How many GB of rams are you using?

 

Tnt

Answered here in the wiki FAQ: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ

[tractng]

I am not able to power on my board.  Do I have to connect the 4-Pin External Power Connector?

 

The led on the board is flashing green.

 

Any ideas?

 

I am using spare memory from dell laptop that is pc4200 533 mhz.

 

tony

[Guest wolfdv]

I am not able to power on my board.  Do I have to connect the 4-Pin External Power Connector?

 

The led on the board is flashing green.

 

Any ideas?

 

I am using spare memory from dell laptop that is pc4200 533 mhz.

 

tony

 

the board is very very picky about ram.. out of all my 667 or 800mhz ddr2 sodimms, only a fraction of the sticks were compatable and working with the board.

 

your 533mhz sticks will not work

[tractng]

I am not able to power on my board.  Do I have to connect the 4-Pin External Power Connector?

 

The led on the board is flashing green.

 

Any ideas?

 

I am using spare memory from dell laptop that is pc4200 533 mhz.  

 

tony

 

the board is very very picky about ram.. out of all my 667 or 800mhz ddr2 sodimms, only a fraction of the sticks were compatable and working with the board.

 

your 533mhz sticks will not work

 

What ram are you using?  Please give me the exact brand .  The4-Pin External Power Connector is for external device just like the manual described or it is a source to power the cpu?

 

tony

[Guest wolfdv]

I'm using 2 x Kingston KTA-MB667/2G ... these are 667mhz 2gb sticks of "apple" certified memory

 

These surprisingly work fine

 

I have other various samsung, crutial, buffalo, hynix mem of varying sizes, 512/1gb/2gb and speeds 667 or 800 that would not make the board post.

 

seems the SPD controller chip is picky as hell

 

also the molex connector on the board is just for external devices.. fans/hdds/etc

[tractng]

I'm using 2 x Kingston KTA-MB667/2G ... these are 667mhz 2gb sticks of "apple" certified memory

 

These surprisingly work fine

 

I have other various samsung, crutial, buffalo, hynix mem of varying sizes, 512/1gb/2gb and speeds 667 or 800 that would not make the board post.

 

seems the SPD controller chip is picky as hell

 

Would these work?

 

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/deepsearch_v3.asp?scriteria=KVR667D2S5+2G&ALL=y&TP=

 

KINGSTON KVR667D2S5/2G ValueRAM 2GB 2048MB 200-pin pc2-5300 DDR2

 

I will just get one stick of RAM for now.

 

 

Can you answer my question about the 4 pin external also

 

 

[Guest wolfdv]

i dont know if that ram will work, but according to kingston's website it will be fine

 

also the molex connector on the board is just for external devices.. fans/hdds/etc

[tractng]

i dont know if that ram will work, but according to kingston's website it will be fine

 

also the molex connector on the board is just for external devices.. fans/hdds/etc

 

It was either kingston or crucial.  Since you have mentioned crucial didn't work (their site says its ok), didn't want to take any risk.

 

I just got one stick for now.  I will add one more down the road.

 

With the dell pc4200 I used, I hear one beep from the mobo (but no video or anything).  I will pick up the ram with one hour and let you guys know the result.

 

tony

[aiden]

I haven't used unRaid before, so all of this is very new to me as I'm looking to move away from hardware RAID5 solution I have now.

My first time too. 

 

1. Do you use unRaid for anything but nas (nzbget, sabnzbd, anything else)? I need something with low power consumption (electricity here is quite expensive), but I want to be able to run few extra things on unRaid box. If I cannot have a little extra room for addons then I'd rather go i3 route (apparently not that bad of a power hog either).

I don't run anything extra on unRAID right now.  There is plenty of power left over on the processor for other things, since file serving really has little impact on the CPU.

 

2. How many drives do you have running off this board? I might be wrong, but I believe that one of the new PCI-e Supermicro SATA controllers is now supported by unRaid. Do you, by any chance, have that as well?

I only have 2 drives running off the board, with a third coming in the next month.  My intention was to grow this board with an 8 port expansion in the PCI-e slot when I needed it.  The way things are going with my movie collection, I may not ever have to do that since the hard drives keep getting bigger.

 

3. Did you have hard time getting correct memory for the board - I run across quite a few reviews on the internet with complaints about memory issues with Supermicro boards (not this one in particular).

Supermicro has a compatibility chart on their website for what RAM will work.  I just grabbed two sticks I had laying around that happened to be in the same family as those mentioned on the chart, and they work perfectly.

 

4. How does IPMI works for you? Again - read quite a few reviews about issues with that on Supermicro (dropped connectivity, instability). I've never worked with IPMI so I wonder if this is something that you cannot live without once you try it.

I've never had a problem with getting IPMI to come up, stay stable or anything else.  My guess is that on a normal sleep cycle where the display wants to drop off, they are getting hung trying to wake up the console.  It's not a difficult thing to reinitialize.  I use IPMI primarily during boot to watch everything.  Once it's up, I usually switch to putty for the console commands because it's simpler to me.  But the ability to start the computer, reboot it if unRAID were to hang, and perform other non-OS related commands remotely is very advantageous, since my server sits in my closet with no keyboard and no monitor.

 

5. How does having lower level CPU affect parity checks? I'm planning on having about 6 data drive to start with (8TB total) and wonder what sort of performance hits I might have to take from time to time.

When I did a parity check all 4 cores were running 100%, and it took about 8 hours for a 2 TB array with 1 data drive and the parity drive.  I don't know how that scales to 6 drives.

[tractng]

 

How do I access IPMI?  Do I need to install a utility?

 

I am able to ping the IP address that I set in the BIOS.

 

I trying ssh and got the login prompt but don't know the password?

 

tony

[Joe L.]

If you are not saturating the bus, you are limited to read speeds of the disk drives.

 

Most people report read speeds between 75 and 100 MB/s on a drive.  Let's assume best case and it will be 1GB per 10 seconds, at 75MB/s it would be 13.3 seconds per 1Gig.

 

You have 2000GB (2TB) to read, therefore, 20000 seconds at 100MB/s... Or  26666 seconds at 75 MB/s.

Dividing by 60 gives between 333.3 minutes and 444.4 minutes

Dividing between 60 once more gives between 5.55 hours and 7.4 hours.

 

A 2 TB drive would therefore, at the very best, calc parity in 5.55 hours with no time included for the actual parity calc.  

Your parity check time of 8 hours sounds as if you are reading the disks at close to 75 MB/s.  (Far better speed than many arrays)  

 

The odds are you do not have all 7200 RPM drives.  That would slow you down by about 1/3 of the speed possible with a drive spinning faster.  The parity check proceeds at the speed of the slowest disk involved.

 

Don't be fooled by the burst speed numbers given by the disk manufacturer.  You need to know the sustained read speed of a disk.

 

Joe L.

[tractng]

 

 

IPMI:  Anybody got the virtual media to work?

 

I want to mount a ISO image from my workstation so the host can use it.

 

tony

[Shurik]

My first time too. 

 

Wow, thanks a LOT for your detailed answers, aiden! Well, I will be looking at this board then hoping for it's availability in the next few weeks. Electricity around here is quite expensive so I would want to minimize the load as much as I can.

[aiden]

A 2 TB drive would therefore, at the very best, calc parity in 5.55 hours with no time included for the actual parity calc.  

Your parity check time of 8 hours sounds as if you are reading the disks at close to 75 MB/s.  (Far better speed than many arrays)  

 

The odds are you do not have all 7200 RPM drives.  That would slow you down by about 1/3 of the speed possible with a drive spinning faster.  The parity check proceeds at the speed of the slowest disk involved.

 

Don't be fooled by the burst speed numbers given by the disk manufacturer.  You need to know the sustained read speed of a disk.

 

Thanks Joe.  I am actually using two 7200 rpm Hitachi's, whose preclear sustained read speeds varied from 120 MB/s to 60 MB/s depending on the position on the platters.  It will be interesting to see what happens when I add a Samsung 5400 to the mix.

 

Wow, thanks a LOT for your detailed answers, aiden! Well, I will be looking at this board then hoping for it's availability in the next few weeks. Electricity around here is quite expensive so I would want to minimize the load as much as I can.

 

You're very welcome.  I'm very much a neophyte with all this stuff, so I would put a lot more stock in what guys like Joe have to say.  By the sound of things this board is not simple to obtain outside the US, so good luck.  

[tractng]

 

 

The following rams work ( I bought a single stick so far).

 

KINGSTON KVR667D2S5/2G ValueRAM 2GB 2048MB 200-pin pc2-5300 DDR2

 

tony

[chrisb42]

Just got my HF board finally yesterday... everything seems to be working fine, however when booting from my USB stick, somehow I have no active ethernet. I'm using the port that's combined with IPMI, and I know it works, because before I changed the boot order to boot from the USB stick, I could access the computer through the built-in webserver functionality of the board.

 

When I boot the 4.5.3 unraid server, I see the NIC lighting up during the boot phase, but when the boot is finished and the prompt appears, the lights are back off and ifconfig shows no address for the port.

 

Has anyone else seen this? What should I be looking at? I tried to change the network.cfg to disable DHCP and provide an IP, but no change, the lights on the NIC after booting are out...

 

Thanks for any hints!

 

-Christian