Supermicro AS-E301-9D-8CN4 Review Embedded EPYC Appliance

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BoredSysadmin

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Mar 2, 2019
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fairly fast CPU, low power and up-to 512gb ram - sounds like great ESXi host platform if one doesn't mind obvious deficiencies on the storage side
(no hot-plug, limited total capacity and, sata performance)
 

Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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once these things come down in price to the sub $500 i'll pickup one for a firewall.
I somewhat wish they made a 4C or -8CT version. It would knock around $250 off the price. Given the expansion capabilities of the chassis and motherboard, I think that would be extremely attractive.
 

Mam89

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Jan 14, 2016
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These could be used for several different network appliances. Video/Surveillance and Audio/VoIP for (really) remote locations. The CPU allows the ability to transcode and compress on the fly. 4 SATA SSD speed would be acceptable for that.
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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I was trying to guess if you could add an extra drive cage so in total 6 x 7mm disks up top.

Do that with an A2sdi-8c in the case and you could have s supper low power and light weight storage and virtualization platform. Just need to consider using some quieter fans.
@Patrick that is assuming we still stand by those 15w idle figures in your test of that board.

Friend has ordered this exact system though yet to be delivered.

Will a 3.5” disk have mounting holes ? Or 2 ?
 
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ullbeking

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Jul 28, 2017
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I've researched these boards, the EPYC 3000, their small chassis, and all the other stuff, and it's really hard to justify even wanting one. For what they are, they are outrageously expensive. Even finding something with 10 GbE NIC's in the A+ series is hard enough. It feels to me as though Supermicro isn't even trying when it comes to AMD options. I really, really want to get an AMD server and experience this fantastic value for money that everybody keeps talking about, but I'm not finding it :-(
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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Compared to intel the 3000 series is cheaper, but not massively so. Certainly lower power than the d-2100 series cpu.
AMD have some monster chips for sure on the socketed EYPC range but for most people in a home environment 16 cores does it anyway.
 
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ullbeking

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I was trying to guess if you could add an extra drive cage so in total 6 x 7mm disks up top.
This sounds like a very tight fit.

Do that with an A2sdi-8c in the case and you could have s supper low power and light weight storage and virtualization platform. Just need to consider using some quieter fans.
I have been using C2000 boards as very light weight virtualization hosts, especially at home. They are also good single-function servers, such as NAS controllers and firewalls, in which case I would the software so that the service runs on the bare metal.

I'd love to upgrade them to something like the A2SDi-8C+-HLNF4 and move experiment with other C3000 systems. I will wait until I have a compelling reason to upgrade.

I asked about the performance difference between the C2758 and C3758 in another forum channel. I got a nice answer and I need to look for the thread now.

Compared to intel the 3000 series is cheaper, but not massively so. Certainly lower power than the d-2100 series cpu.
Compared to Intel what? Initially I was confused because we have two completely different "3000" series of CPU... Intel C3000 and AMD EPYC 3000.

I haven't really kept up with Xeon D since the D-1500 models were popular. I had settled on the C2000 (post Erratum AVR.54 fix) series because they are so power efficient and easy to keep quiet when used as a home server.

I still haven't been able to figure out whether the Atom C3000 and EPYC 3000 are supposed to be considered as roughly equivalent in capabilities and power usage. Heat, and therefore fan noise, naturally follows, and keeping noise low is often the most important thing in many of my use cases.

Or rather, should I be comparing Xeon D-2100 (or D-2200?) and EPYC 3000?

I'm not expecting definitive answers. I understand enough to know that what I (we?) really need is a bit more clarity.

AMD have some monster chips for sure on the socketed EYPC range but for most people in a home environment 16 cores does it anyway.
If I could get 16 cores in a home server and keep it near-silent I would be very happy indeed.

EPYC 7000 looks amazing on paper as a compute host, but probably more suitable for the data center. I'm waiting until Rome is launched and the corresponding PCI-e 4.0 boards are available. After that I'll wait a little bit longer still. I prefer not to be on the very bleeding edge.