Dell C6100 XS23-TY3 2U 4-Node (8 CPU) Cloud Server

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NetWise

Active Member
Jun 29, 2012
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Edmonton, AB, Canada
Greetings all.
IS there a newer variant of the 6220 that is on the VMware hardware list? I want to build out an ESXI 6 network but I don't want to break the bank with new hardware. I have a 6100 that I know is not on the HCL but I love the form factor of it. I want to update my lab and be able to test ESXI 6 along with all the bells and whistles.
I have thought of switching over to HP but they don't have anything comparable to these awesome boxes. I DO like the idea of just going to a full blade enclosure but those prices add up quick.

Thoughts?
HP does have the SL series which would be comparable'ish. They're certainly not as abundant or popular though. C7000's aren't that much are they? ;)
 

Sbravener

New Member
Apr 15, 2016
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HP does have the SL series which would be comparable'ish. They're certainly not as abundant or popular though. C7000's aren't that much are they? ;)
C7000's are fairly reasonable. ebay from around $150 plus the plug in modules, backplane, etc. what is going to get ya is power consumption.
you can get some decent BL480's at a good price as well. again power consumption.

Sadly that is the route I will prob go. get a couple of Synologys and a loaded C7000 and I can build to my heart's content.

The price we pay for education.
 
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PancakeBimmer

New Member
Apr 15, 2016
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I just bought a C6100 with two nodes, and the ad specifically notes that there is no backplane for two additional nodes. The two nodes will serve me enough, but can it be modified for two more nodes if there is ever a need for them?

Edit:
Think I found needed parts for other two nodes. Turns out it's midplane that I need, not backplane.
Midplane part 47X9Y
 
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nickveldrin

New Member
Sep 4, 2013
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Is this just a matter that the older hardware hasn't been upgraded to use TLS and is still using SSLv3 (which isn't supported in most browsers these days)...?

Easier than maintaining a separate installation IMHO is using something like Firefox or Palemoon portable with the security.tls.version.min value in about:config set to zero; that'll allow you to still access SSLv3 sites. I recommend Pale moon in particular since it has an extension called Pale Moon Commander that will give you very fine-grained control over which protocols and cipher suites you can use which is very handy.

Similarly if you don't want your portable copy interfering with your standard copy of pale moon, find your Palemoon-Portable.ini file and uncomment the following like so:
Code:
[Environment]
;(multiple istances)
MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
...or just modify your FF/PM launch command line to add -no-remote.
So i finally gave this a shot in a modern OS, cause one of my blades isn't POSTing anymore, and of course it doesn't work. I even enabled every checkbox under the cipher tab.

I'll just need to keep an old server2008r2 VM going everywhere if i ever need to use the IPMI on the c6100.
 
Apr 21, 2016
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Hi everyone.
I've found a tool that can flash the PIC16 FCB : Dell FCB Firmware, 1.02 | Dell US
I've somehow stumbled upon it by googling PEC6100FCB102.

Unfortunately it's an older version than the one I have (1.04) or better put, I've had - now on 1.02.
I've managed to brick the FCB (this thing is F...ing loud in "dead fcb" mode) writing the 1.20 pic18 firmware but, after some tinkering with the chassis (removing the sleds. ps, fans - most of the stuff you can easily get to) and some unsuccessful attempts to flash the fcb via ipmi (btw, the hex code in the readme points to a BMC109T1.ROM file), it worked somehow (from dos - sled #4).

I didn't manage to figure out if there are some cmd line options so if anyone gets to try it, please post results. The most useful thing right now would be a pic16 fw image.

Here's a image from ipmi:
ipmitool> sensor
FCB FAN1 | 4400.000 | RPM | ok | na | 1500.000 | na | 25500.000 | 25500.000 | 25500.000
FCB FAN2 | 4400.000 | RPM | ok | na | 1500.000 | na | 25500.000 | 25500.000 | 25500.000
FCB FAN3 | 4400.000 | RPM | ok | na | 1500.000 | na | 25500.000 | 25500.000 | 25500.000
FCB FAN4 | 4400.000 | RPM | ok | na | 1500.000 | na | 25500.000 | 25500.000 | 25500.000
PEF Action | 0x0 | discrete | 0x0080| na | na | na | na | na | na
WatchDog2 | 0x0 | discrete | 0x0080| na | na | na | na | na | na
AC Pwr On | 0x0 | discrete | 0x0080| na | na | na | na | na | na
ACPI Pwr State | 0x0 | discrete | 0x0088| na | na | na | na | na | na
FCB Ambient1 | 24.000 | degrees C | ok | na | na | na | na | 50.000 | 255.000
FCB Ambient2 | na | | na | na | na | na | na | 50.000 | 255.000
CPU1Status | 0x0 | discrete | 0x0080| na | na | na | na | na | na
CPU2Status | 0x0 | discrete | 0x0080| na | na | na | na | na | na
PS 12V | 12.090 | Volts | ok | 10.602 | 10.850 | 11.160 | 12.834 | 13.144 | 13.392
PS 5V | 5.044 | Volts | ok | 4.394 | 4.524 | 4.654 | 5.330 | 5.486 | 5.590
MLB TEMP 2 | 52.000 | degrees C | ok | na | na | na | 85.000 | 87.000 | 90.000
MLB TEMP 3 | 47.000 | degrees C | ok | na | na | na | 85.000 | 87.000 | 90.000
Processor 1 Temp | 58.000 | degrees C | ok | na | na | na | 81.000 | 85.000 | 90.000
MLB TEMP 1 | 52.000 | degrees C | ok | na | na | na | 85.000 | 87.000 | 90.000
Processor 2 Temp | 60.000 | degrees C | ok | na | na | na | 81.000 | 85.000 | 90.000
STBY 3.3V | 3.354 | Volts | ok | 2.907 | 2.976 | 3.079 | 3.526 | 3.629 | 3.681
PS Current | 44.000 | Amps | ok | na | na | na | 255.000 | 255.000 | 255.000
SEL Fullness | 0x0 | discrete | 0x0080| na | na | na | na | na | na
PCI BUS | 0x0 | discrete | 0x0080| na | na | na | na | na | na
Memory | 0x0 | discrete | 0x0080| na | na | na | na | na | na
VCORE 1 | 1.038 | Volts | ok | na | na | na | 2.117 | 2.117 | 2.117
VCORE 2 | 0.940 | Volts | ok | na | na | na | 2.958 | 2.958 | 2.958
NM Capability | 0x3 | discrete | 0x0000| na | na | na | na | na | na
Security | 0x0 | discrete | 0x0080| na | na | na | na | na | na
PSU 1 AC Status | na | discrete | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
PSU 2 AC Status | na | discrete | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
PSU 1 Present | na | discrete | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
PSU 2 Present | na | discrete | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
PSU 2 POUT | na | | na | na | na | na | na | na | na
PSU 1 POUT | na | | na | na | na | na | na | na | na

That's with 3 sleds on, idle.
Funny thing, with the v1.04 that I've had, the thing was silent with one sled on, 2 would go to 6000+ RPM.
Other good note, with one sled on, idle, the fans would go to 3600 rpm only.
 
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nuceman

New Member
Apr 25, 2016
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Hey there, first post. I started looking at the C6100 today and I have limited experience with rack server equipment and hypervisor configurations. I read through about 20 pages of the thread but didn't see the answer to a few questions I had about this setup.
  1. Are the 4 nodes managed as a pool of resources or is the 4 node setup strictly for sharing the power supply/cooling/drive backplane? I'm not getting a really good fix on if the 4 nodes are for all intents and purposes, 4 standalone servers.
  2. Do all 4 nodes need to have matching hardware for this to operate?
  3. Do the nodes support the Xeon X5687 processor? A few videos online mention this only supports up to 95W TDP and the Intel spec page for the X5687 says it's 130W, but I see some nodes on eBay with the X5687 installed.
  4. Do sellers typically include a CPU heatsink when you buy a barebones setup or do they usually ship with them?
Thanks!
 

c6100

Member
Oct 22, 2013
163
1
18
USA
Has anyone ran CrystalDiskMark on the C6100 running SSD? If so what were your results?

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk
 

nickveldrin

New Member
Sep 4, 2013
23
3
3
What kind of results would you be expecting to see?
Yeah, it's just an Intel ICH10 inside, so those benchmarks can be referred to. Or if you have the LSI riser, it's an LSI1608 i think?

I'd have to double check - Figure the system is 7+years old, so don't expect anything astronomical.
 

frogtech

Well-Known Member
Jan 4, 2016
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Well the reason I asked what kind of results he'd be expecting is exactly cause of what you said, it is all SATA 3.0 Gbps unless you have at least the SAS 2008 mez card or SATA 3 HBA.
 

frogtech

Well-Known Member
Jan 4, 2016
1,482
272
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35
Hey there, first post. I started looking at the C6100 today and I have limited experience with rack server equipment and hypervisor configurations. I read through about 20 pages of the thread but didn't see the answer to a few questions I had about this setup.
  1. Are the 4 nodes managed as a pool of resources or is the 4 node setup strictly for sharing the power supply/cooling/drive backplane? I'm not getting a really good fix on if the 4 nodes are for all intents and purposes, 4 standalone servers.
  2. Do all 4 nodes need to have matching hardware for this to operate?
  3. Do the nodes support the Xeon X5687 processor? A few videos online mention this only supports up to 95W TDP and the Intel spec page for the X5687 says it's 130W, but I see some nodes on eBay with the X5687 installed.
  4. Do sellers typically include a CPU heatsink when you buy a barebones setup or do they usually ship with them?
Thanks!
1. The 4 nodes are 4 standalone servers. Here's the thing though, some virtualization dashboards that report on computing resources of all the servers in a failover cluster will show everything as "combined" resources. But the nodes don't actually perform that way unless of course they're setup up to work together in an environment say for example HPC.

2. No.

3. I'm not 100% sure on how processor support is handled for these. But I do know that there is a 1400W PSU available for the C6100 which is 300W higher than the standard 1100W you see in most. So if the X5687 is supported you most likely need the 1400W if you run x2 X5687 chips in all 4 nodes.

4. Usually yes but always ask.
 

c6100

Member
Oct 22, 2013
163
1
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USA
I have benchmarks done using the H310 and H710 and have not been overly impressed with either. Really, any controller (including the ICH10) would be helpful. I am trying to determine if the issue is with my SSD drives or controllers.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk
 

c6100

Member
Oct 22, 2013
163
1
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USA
ha, I thought "As SSD" was some mode in CrystalDisk.

Attached are the results on the SSD with vSphere on top. How do they compare to yours?
 

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frogtech

Well-Known Member
Jan 4, 2016
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I don't have anything to compare to I was just wanting to see if the numbers were different with AS SSD. Can you do it on the drive at the host OS level without testing the disk in a VM? I mean your original bench doesn't look that bad but some of the numbers look off. Did you flash IT firmware onto the H310 by any chance? The H310 with Dell firmware has pretty low queue depth and I'm not sure if that translates to poor benchmarking performance depending on the queue depth used by the default benchmark on these programs.
 

c6100

Member
Oct 22, 2013
163
1
18
USA
I don't have anything to compare to I was just wanting to see if the numbers were different with AS SSD. Can you do it on the drive at the host OS level without testing the disk in a VM? I mean your original bench doesn't look that bad but some of the numbers look off. Did you flash IT firmware onto the H310 by any chance? The H310 with Dell firmware has pretty low queue depth and I'm not sure if that translates to poor benchmarking performance depending on the queue depth used by the default benchmark on these programs.
I agree, doesn't look right. I was hoping to get someone to post their results before having to do more tests. A baseline expected results would be great to see.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk