EXPIRED Hyve "S-SKUD 2" - 1U, 8x LFF SATA6, 2x LGA 3647 Skylake-SP, 2x PCIe x16, 2x OCP PCIe x8 w/2x 25Gbps Connectx-4 installed - $149 + Shipping

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eduncan911

The New James Dean
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@Patrick I am getting some kind of Site Error message when trying to post any more pics. I think I hit some kind of limit? Even new posts, I get the error (it's a modal popup that says Something went wrong and to contact the site administrator).
 

plessley

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Dec 1, 2019
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Has anyone got any idea what rails these use?
King slide 809 doesn't pick anything up, nor does king slide 3561. The inner rail is 32 inches long, and of course the mounting slugs do not match up to anything I have here in the lab.
 

eduncan911

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Has anyone got any idea what rails these use?
King slide 809 doesn't pick anything up, nor does king slide 3561. The inner rail is 32 inches long, and of course the mounting slugs do not match up to anything I have here in the lab.
I was looking at that ..

The tabs are similar to my Chenbro NR12000. I already measured though and the locations are different.

However... The holes do seem to like up. I have a set of rails in storage I was going to try to dig up. Mixed in with like a dozen others, it may take me a bit. Oh, and the attic is like 130 F right now.

Was going to pull out the NR12000 and do some comparison shots as well.
 

plessley

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Dec 1, 2019
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I was looking at that ..

The tabs are similar to my Chenbro NR12000. I already measured though and the locations are different.

However... The holes do seem to like up. I have a set of rails in storage I was going to try to dig up. Mixed in with like a dozen others, it may take me a bit. Oh, and the attic is like 130 F right now.

Was going to pull out the NR12000 and do some comparison shots as well.
My kids moved down here from Alaska and are continually complaining about the heat. It's maybe 90f right now.

I was really hoping not to have to go with generic rail-less trays, but...
 

RolloZ170

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Apr 24, 2016
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yeah, forgot to mention that. I'm still wondering what was there initially that used the 110mm length.
enterprise class SSD
I think I hit some kind of limit? Even new posts, I get the error (it's a modal popup that says Something went wrong and to contact the site administrator).
max. 1mb picture size. use jpg not png. sometime it sucks, rename file and try again.
 

RolloZ170

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Take note of the proprietary holes and sliding mounting system. Quite possibly the best setup I've ever used. However, there are no ATX standoffs here and no hold provisions for them
looks like wiwynn boards
(the MS Olympus motherboard (source project olympus) was made by wiwynn for MS)
 
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eduncan911

The New James Dean
Jul 27, 2015
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enterprise class SSD

max. 1mb picture size. use jpg not png. sometime it sucks, rename file and try again.
I flat out get an error now for any image. Even small ones. I think I hit some forum user space limit or something (I've been posting max-size pics for years and years like this).
 

RolloZ170

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Apr 24, 2016
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I flat out get an error now for any image. Even small ones. I think I hit some forum user space limit or something (I've been posting max-size pics for years and years like this).
as usual. some special jpg's don't work, and sometimes the antivirus hackes in (false positives) resize the pic a bit and try again.
 

tRens

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So I have an old Cisco UCS C240 M3 Server 2x E5-2680 128gb ram.

My question is would it be worth it to pick one of these up at this price to replace my dated server? (are there better options out there that would be in the same price range) This just seems like a huge step up.

thanks.
 

eduncan911

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So I have an old Cisco UCS C240 M3 Server 2x E5-2680 128gb ram.

My question is would it be worth it to pick one of these up at this price to replace my dated server? (are there better options out there that would be in the same price range) This just seems like a huge step up.

thanks.
Isn't the answer always, "it depends on your use case"? Hehe.

In short, Yes, the memory controller of that generation of Sandy Bridge CPUs is pretty limited where as the memory bandwidth of Skylake-SP greatly exceeds that of your old system (and PCIe 3.0!). The Cores are a significant leap in technology and raw performance (and Ghz speeds!) between those two generations, however power usage has gone up IMO. And then you have PCIe 3.0, which alone can help with bottlenecks (I recently hit the PCIe bandwidth limit of my x8 PCIe 2.0 HBA card! Had to upgrade to an PCIe 3.0 HBA just to get the bandwidth out of the ZFS array).

However... The big catch here, and why the chassis is so cheap, is that there is ZERO documentation, support, nor even firmware support for this server.

We are on our own in figuring out what works and doesn't. How to fix things and whatever quirks come up. That is why this exact thread exists, to centralize all of us hacking on the same box and what we discover, posted in this thread.

For example, I liked the server because of the OCP ports and cards that I have. However, during my research of having the server, I've found out that the OCP slots are not normal slots allowing for general OCP cards - they have several restrictions that pretty much makes them useless, except for the "custom heatsink" version of the dual SFP28 OCP card it comes with.

Also, those are the only NIC connections: two cages of SFP+. So your switch needs at least SFP (1G) to connect. You could also get some SFP+ -> 10GBaseT adapters as well. Or just pickup a cheap switch with some SFP+ ports, while you wait for SFP28 and 100Gbps switches to come down in price as that's what is the next milestone for us STH gurus. 10G is getting old and easily maxes out with two old SATA SSDs in RAID0. 25GbE is the next step for us home labbers as the cost is really dropping (there's a huge 100GbE switch in the For Sale search right now, for like $500-$600).

Right now, the price of the server and CPUs is an investment - a risk that you may not even use the server because of some limitation, or some crushed hope. If you want to accept the risk, because of the inexpensive price, yes it's worth the upgrade.

For me, the price of the Skylake-SP CPUs are just a bit of reach for me. So I'm picking up the oldest, cheapest, $75 CPUs I can find to get the box running. I am personally willing to wait years, many years, for the CPUs to drop in prices. The E5-2699 V4 king of all LGA2011 CPUs (22C @ 2.6 Ghz all turbo) used to be a $2000 processor on eBay back in 2014. Now it's $200... 8 years later.

Yeah, I know your generation of Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Broadwell-E, etc. I've had over a dozen boards and systems for both generations of LGA2011 and 2011-3 for over a decade. I still have a few of your generation servers running, a couple pairs of Ivy Bridge-E E5-2670 V2 and one pair of E5-2695 V2s from a nice STH member. I also have an Asus RIVE Black Edition overclocking an 8-core E5-1680 V2 to 4.4 Ghz. Your old generation works perfectly fine for VMs and processes. Good powerful systems with lots of cores, and dirt cheap! Where they are dated is in their raw Ghz Speed numbers (Plex and vGPU games like very high Ghz single CPU cores over lots of cores) and memory bandwidth (some DB apps wants to cache a lot in ram), not to mention lots of features like M.2 and Optane persisted memory sticks and frankly having PCIe for your NVMe drives is beyond a night and day difference. NVMe M.2 and PCIe cards really tidy up a system too - no cables!

in summary, it's a complete risk. But a fun one if you like to tinker.

Getting started: This S-SKUD 2 model overall seems to require some tinkering to even get started, to reset the IPMI and BIOS, and some firmware updates of the SFP28 card to even get it started and controllable. There's also no rails yet that we've identified (we're looking!).

Once you get over that, it works easily for 8x 3.5 HDDs (I'm fitting 10x!) and two PCIe Full Height, Half Length (FHHL) slots - which is quite nice. You can add both a SAS3 HBA PCIe card AND a 100 GbE fiber card, with dual big CPUs, 12x mem sockets, and 8/10 3.5" drives - all in a 1U space. That's quite impressive really.

There are other 1U systems like Dell and Quanta that actually have 3x or even 4x PCIe HHHL slots, even with an additional OCP/QCT port. So it's not unheard of.

Remember, it's a 1U with dual PCIe slots and holds 8/10x 3.5", is louder, and uses costly CPUs.

Do your research on Skylake-SP 1st gen and 2nd gen CPUs. They will be your biggest bar of entry for this server. And don't get the F CPUs.

Patrick has made two great STH articles about Skylake value add models, and which ones makes sense to get.
 
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eduncan911

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@Everyone, I will try to keep the OP relevant in this thread for as long as I am around.

So if you see a discovery, a key detail, documentation or alike posted in this thread, and you think newcomers reading the OP need to know this, then ping me in a reply and I'll add it to the OP.

I'm going to index the OP as well, linking to several posts that people have replied with.
 

eduncan911

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I think one of the key components us SAS HDD owners need to be searching for is an OCP HBA Mezzanine card they will fit in that x8 OCP 2.0 port, as the motherboard has 14x SATA6 ports and 1x M.2 NVMe port.

Personally, I love the all-sata approach. LSI HBAs use between 9-11 Watts of power, idle. Unfortunately, I've recently invest into a couple dozen 10TB SAS drives... Doh!

I've been searching for a week with things like, "HBA SAS3 OCP" and alike but unable to find a good match.

Most OCP HBA cards have their Mini-SAS connectors under the card. Which that could have worked.

However, this chassis seems to have a proprietary connector, that breaks out to 8x MiniSAS ports (4 flanking each side) on the motherboard. Cool idea, but it's been deleted in this board revision (but they left the connector under the OCP card!!).

That connector seems to stand off the motherboard too high, and would directly interfere with HBA OCP cards mounted there (see my pics earlier).

I'm wonder if I can just Dremel/cut off that connector, and it will fit a normal SAS mezzanine OCP card.
 
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Fritz

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I think one of the key components us SAS HDD owners need to be searching for is an OCP HBA Mezzanine card they will fit in that x8 OCP 2.0 port, as the motherboard has 14x SATA6 ports and 1x M.2 NVMe port.

Personally, I love the all-sata approach. LSI HBAs use between 9-11 Watts of power, idle. Unfortunately, I've recently invest into a couple dozen 10TB SAS drives... Doh!

I've been searching for a week with things like, "HBA SAS3 OCP" and alike but unable to find a good match.

Most OCP HBA cards have their Mini-SAS connectors under the card. Which that could have worked.

However, this chassis seems to have a proprietary connector, that breaks out to 8x MiniSAS ports (4 flanking each side) on the motherboard. Cool idea, but it's been deleted in this board revision (but they left the connector under the OCP card!!).

That connector seems to stand off the motherboard too high, and would directly interfere with HBA OCP cards mounted there (see my pics earlier).

I'm wonder if I can just Dremel/cut off that connector, and it will fit a normal SAS mezzanine OCP card.
In my personal experience, Dremel tools and MB's do not mix. I've ruined more than one and have sworn never to touch a MB with a Dremel again.
 
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eduncan911

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In my personal experience, Dremel tools and MB's do not mix. I've ruined more than one and have sworn never to touch a MB with a Dremel again.
Hehe. Kind of half-joking. Half, joking, that is. There's obviously power connectors and I'm sure a number of power sub circuits that wouldn't take kindly to being shorted out after being grinded down.

But I am seriously considering popping it off with a screw driver and carefully removing the pins - all to flatten down that area.

I would never do that, unless I can get hold of a SAS OCP HBA Mezzanine x8 Type 1 Connector card that just happens to fit there.

So far, the Quanta OCP HBA variant comes very close with it's 2x Mini-SAS on the bottom. This actually is highly preferred, so you have room for the PCIe x16 slot that folds over above it. I just may pick one up for the off chance the spacing does work out...

Just for the record of anyone reading this... OCP 2.0 is pretty much dead. OCP 3.0, and it's completely incompatible interface, cards, and connectors, is the future of this connector technology. It's awesome what mobos are doing now in the Rear I/O to have plug-n-play x16 PCIe 4.0 - right there in the rear I/O, not taking up any of the PCIe slots (I sometimes run 4x GPUs for, reasons, time to time).

I was also highly considering the AsRock Rack B550M (full ATX w/OCP 2.0 connector offset, not taking up much space from one of the PCIe expansion slots). But after reading up on OCP 3.0 data sheets, evaluating the current allotment of all 100% discontinued OCP 2.0 cards on eBay (and there oddnesses), as well as what's available new and through retail channels, I don't think investing any more money into OCP 2.0 is worth it since what is out now is limited, and discontinued - with nothing I can find for any new announcements of new cards - they are all for the new 3.0 stuff.

I originally wanted OCP in an 1U to run an Optane 900P as ZIL and Persistent L2ARC for my spinning disk backing, with also a 40 GbE card... All as a simple backup server for my homelab. To do that, I would need either 40GbE native onboard (good luck finding that Mobo), or a 1U with dual PCIe slots. I believe Dell and a few others make dual PCIe slots 1U machines. This particular S-SKUD 2 1U chassis fit that niche requirement I had of 2x PCIe, 1U, and 8x LFF disks (I'm fitting 10x in it now).

That one hiccup of no SAS support turned me off, until I read on on NVDIMM. Lol, that's what Optane was originally created for - not to be limited by the slow PCIe data buses. It's Mixed Mode is fascinating to me (find Patrick's STH video on Optane deep dive - as he was right, no one has explained it in the middle ground). So I may experiment with them down the road, since this chassis seems to have some BIOS options for them.

And also, I just found 5x 10TB SATA6 HE drives in my main server that I can swap out for my SAS3 versions. That will give me 5x SATA6 for this server to get started with, along with my 900P and 40GbE! Done. Then I can tinker over time as we experiment, try some NVDIMM, maybe hack the SAS connector, etc. Being my backup machine, I can take it down from time to time.
 
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eduncan911

The New James Dean
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The server does not come with Rails. It comes with Inner rails of some 3rd party, and it's missing the Outer sections.

The Chenbro NR12000 rails do NOT fit, besides being an identical looking chassis Holes no where near line up though. Hole spacing is too far off. However, if one wants to take a drill press and make their own holes - yeah, no problem! And there's even 1 hole to align and start with.

Some pics of the writing on the inner rail sections.

(sorry, too tired to flip 'em)

PXL_20220629_180929085.MP.jpg
PXL_20220629_180922217.MP.jpg

PXL_20220629_180917907.MP.jpg

PXL_20220629_180850552.MP.jpg
 

eduncan911

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I cannot get my server to POST. Screen remains in sleep mode. Fans spinning up to max about 30s from starting.

I using using a single Bronze CPU.

Do we need dual CPUs? Ouch...
 

plessley

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Dec 1, 2019
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I cannot get my server to POST. Screen remains in sleep mode. Fans spinning up to max about 30s from starting.

I using using a single Bronze CPU.

Do we need dual CPUs? Ouch...
No, I got it to work with single CPU.

Take the lid off and watch the post process, it'll go through 3 phases, just pay attention to the last number that comes up. Also watch the LEDs by CPU 1, there's a catastrophic error led that'll light at some point if the CPU is hosed
 
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RolloZ170

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I cannot get my server to POST. Screen remains in sleep mode. Fans spinning up to max about 30s from starting.
remove all cards. maybe the riser slot is proprietäry.
bmc led flashing/blinking ?
have you inserted the processor corrently ? (screw 3&4 till the end.)