Small Multi-headed / Storage Hypervisor - CPU advice?

[Bradford]

I'd like to follow up with my initial post, quoted below. I am starting to think that the Xeon D-1500 series isn't what I need at the moment. I say this for 2 reasons - 1, I realize I need more than 2 PCIe slots. 2, $900 is too rich for me at this point for the X10SDV-7TP4F that checks the other boxes.

I want to build a multi-headed home server that will provide the following roles:

* Storage Server (not sure what software, but it will be 4-6x 4TB
* Head 1: HTPC (+ gaming)
* Head 2: Desktop (development, vmware workstation, gaming) [optional]
* Other VMs (development, range building, etc
* Gateway/FW

Is there a Xeon that has decent TDW (one of the things that drew me to the D-1537), great virt support, is fast enough for my use case, and isn't prohibitively expensive? Something that datacenters are dumping? The same goes for mobos, suggestions wanted.

Finally, any good platform that would be a good fit? I have used ESXi for awhile and Hyper-V. I'm interested in Proxmox or Unraid.

Original post: Intel Xeon D-1500 Series Discussion

 

[T_Minus]

Not really on the 'good power' side but a E5-1650 v1 or v2 may let you do a bunch of stuff and gaming which usually requires more cpu power.

 

[Keljian]

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

For a file server you want low idle power consumption,what this means is that when you add a graphics card into the mix you can't easily achieve it.

I would build two boxes, one for gaming/desktop, one for serving/everything else.

As for the HTPC, I would be looking at a NUC with in home streaming(from the desktop).

If you must have a "do everything" box, the e5-2670 platform is probably going to be your go to, but expect idle up around 100-150w for 2x8 core chips.. that said, your savings in cost of build may make up for the cost of power- $60-80 per chip, $300 motherboard, $50-80 for some ram (half tempted to build one myself but I have a very nice i7-5775c system)

Gaming does not need a lot of CPU power, just reasonably fast single/double thread performance.

As I said on another forum, TDP is not a good indicator, idle power is better as the majority of the time the machine will be idling(there is no point having a system with low Maximum TDP when it only hits maximum TDP for an hour or less per day).

And proxmox would be my go-to for a hypervisor distro with graphics passthrough, and AMD my card brand of choice for that.

 

[Bradford]

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

For a file server you want low idle power consumption,what this means is that when you add a graphics card into the mix you can't easily achieve it.

I would build two boxes, one for gaming/desktop, one for serving/everything else.

As for the HTPC, I would be looking at a NUC with in home streaming(from the desktop).

If you must have a "do everything" box, the e5-2670 platform is probably going to be your go to, but expect idle up around 100-150w for 2x8 core chips.. that said, your savings in cost of build may make up for the cost of power- $60-80 per chip, $300 motherboard, $50-80 for some ram (half tempted to build one myself but I have a very nice i7-5775c system)

Gaming does not need a lot of CPU power, just reasonably fast single/double thread performance.

As I said on another forum, TDP is not a good indicator, idle power is better as the majority of the time the machine will be idling(there is no point having a system with low Maximum TDP when it only hits maximum TDP for an hour or less per day).

And proxmox would be my go-to for a hypervisor distro with graphics passthrough, and AMD my card brand of choice for that.

Yes, a lot of what I want is contradictory. The rational for a a multi-head setup, specifically HTPC, is "hey, I have this file / vm server sitting idle all day, why not share that idle CPU with a HTPC." Unfortunately, to do this you need a dedicated PCIe GPU and that kills the low power and simplicity appeal of sharing processors. GPU idle power has a long way to go.

Perhaps a good compromise would be a dom0 type of config, where the hypervisor is also the HTPC with low power integrated GPU (and possibly precluding Xeon - unless there are Xeon flavors with iGPU) and other VMs running atop this config. The desktop can stay separate.

Thanks for the tip on the e5-2670, I will look into that.

 

[mumford]

What kind of gaming? A Nvidia Geforce Pascal sitting idle still eats too much wattage, imho. My suggestion is to run a lower power file/media server, a separate PC/console for gaming, and a Nvidia Shield Android TV for watching tv, music, and listening to music. It is $150 on sale, runs Kodi, does 4k h.265 hardware decoding, and consumes less than 10W. I am unable to build a HTPC with a Nvidia graphic card for that price.

 

[Keljian]

Yes, a lot of what I want is contradictory. The rational for a a multi-head setup, specifically HTPC, is "hey, I have this file / vm server sitting idle all day, why not share that idle CPU with a HTPC." Unfortunately, to do this you need a dedicated PCIe GPU and that kills the low power and simplicity appeal of sharing processors. GPU idle power has a long way to go.

Perhaps a good compromise would be a dom0 type of config, where the hypervisor is also the HTPC with low power integrated GPU (and possibly precluding Xeon - unless there are Xeon flavors with iGPU) and other VMs running atop this config. The desktop can stay separate.

Thanks for the tip on the e5-2670, I will look into that.

There are Xeon variants with an iGpu, but finding a board with outputs could get interesting.

How many drives are you going to run in the file server?

 

[Bradford]

What kind of gaming? A Nvidia Geforce Pascal sitting idle still eats too much wattage, imho. My suggestion is to run a lower power file/media server, a separate PC/console for gaming, and a Nvidia Shield Android TV for watching tv, music, and listening to music. It is $150 on sale, runs Kodi, does 4k h.265 hardware decoding, and consumes less than 10W. I am unable to build a HTPC with a Nvidia graphic card for that price.

Shield TV looks pretty good on paper. I'll definitely consider that.

There are Xeon variants with an iGpu, but finding a board with outputs could get interesting.

How many drives are you going to run in the file server?

4 currently, 6 when I build, and 8 maximum

 

[Keljian]

Did you want to be gaming on your htpc?

 

[Bradford]

Did you want to be gaming on your htpc?

Yes, but I'm willing to use something like Steam in-home streaming for that.

 

[Keljian]

Ok so for the file server you will want vt-d, which limits your options unless you run it in dom0.

Is your file server going to be running ZFS? (Will you want ECC?)

 

[Bradford]

I have no experience with ZFS, but I'm interested in it. Yes to ECC, but something I can compromise on. At the moment I'm using Storage Spaces but I'd like to move to something new. I'm considering unraid but I'm flexible.

 

[Keljian]

Storage spaces and ReFS would mean you could use dom0 for file serving. Then hyperv for virtualisation- certainly is an option which would mean not needing Vt-d

 

[Keljian]

What I am angling towards is the c2750/c2758 platform for the htpc/file server/firewall. It doesn't have vt-d though, for passing though devices. On the other hand it is very low power.

It is an 8 core atom, so has plenty enough power for the majority of things.


Something like this:
Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Atom Boards | A1SAi-2750F

Or
Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Atom Boards | A1SAM-2750F

 

[Bradford]

Storage spaces and ReFS would mean you could use dom0 for file serving. Then hyperv for virtualisation- certainly is an option which would mean not needing Vt-d

That's what I set up for my dad - Windows 10 with storage spaces running Kodi and an Ubuntu VM download server in Hyper-V. It works well and is simple. I could certainly do that again. In that case I'd limit my drives to 6x 4TB (2.5" Backup Plus) and try and fit it in a small enclosure.

What I am angling towards is the c2750/c2758 platform for the htpc/file server/firewall. It doesn't have vt-d though, for passing though devices. On the other hand it is very low power.

Something like this:
Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Atom Boards | A1SAi-2750F

Or
Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Atom Boards | A1SAM-2750F

You're taking me in a direction I wasn't really considering before, but the more I think about it the better it looks. I'll have to sleep on it. Thanks for your input!

 

[Keljian]

On the other hand, I do like my setup and it could be repurposed for what you are talking about:
Constellation - My new home/home office server build

 

[Keljian]

Proxmox with ZFS in dom0 will also do it

 

[Bradford]

After sleeping on it a few nights, I have a new approach, thanks to you guys. I'm impressed with the Nvidia Shield, so I'll use that as a HTPC. I'll offload my desktop's current 24/7 responsibilities (as a VM and media host) to a small, low power home server. I'm kind of back at square one, though without the multi-headed setup (someday, maybe...). The Atom boards you linked @Keljian look nice, but for about $150 more the D-1518 is available (well, sold out but that's the MSRP). I wonder how that 8-core atom will compete with a 4-core Xeon D?

 

[Keljian]

The xeon will be faster, goes without saying.