ESXI - sweet build - advice requested

[SweetAction]

Build’s Name: ESXI - sweet build
Operating System/ Storage Platform: ESXI 4.1, Win server 2008 R2
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1270 Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache
Motherboard: ASUS P8B-E/4L ATX Server Motherboard LGA 1155 Intel C204 DDR3 ECC UDIMM
Chassis: Antec Three Hundred Illusion Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Drives: (4x) Hitachi Deskstar 3.5 Inch 3 TB CoolSpin SATA 6Gb/s
RAM: 16 GB (4x4GB) DDR3
Add-in Cards: HighPoint RocketRAID 640 4 SATA Port PCI-Express 2.0 x4 SATA 6Gb/s RAID Controller
Power Supply: OCZ ModXStream Pro 500W Modular High Performance Power Supply
Other Bits: HDD will be set in RAID 5

Usage Profile:
So i typically build a network schematic prior to any implimentation. a general idea of what servers and roles i will be placing on this box are as follows:
Server Name Static IP Role
appserv01 10.1.12.11 primary ADDC, DHCP, DNS
appserv02 10.1.12.12 ADDC, NAP, CA, IIS web
fileserv01 10.1.12.13 file services, print services, media services
appserv03 10.1.12.14 WSUS
termserv01 10.1.12.15 Terminal, RDP
appserv04 10.1.12.16 Other Applications: minecraft, TF2

the Raid card uses pciexpress 2.0, which i should be able to put in the pcie x8 slot.


Other information…
I know for the most part in my home environment 90% of this is un-needed overkill, however i am also looking to replicate the design used at my work environment so i can use it as a guini pig whenever we consider rolling out new apps. Obviously the appserv04 is intirly personal server running game servers and the only other server that will be heavily utilized will be fileserv01 because it will host the media for my house.

For the most part this server is assembled from spare parts i had laying around IE the case drives, raid card, and psu, I am not sure if the CPU or mobo i have selected are the "best value" and further unsure if the psu can handle the load sufficiently.

So what i am really trying to adress here is do i have the best bang for buck cpu mobo picked out, and is the psu sufficiant? i have not bought the cpu mobo or ram yet, but figure cost on cpu and mobo to be around $580. I also considered using a i7-2600k instead but then i would not be able to use ecc. Additionally i considered the E3-1230-1275 and honestly i am having a hard time picking an appropriate cpu and mobo. so any advice or explination of benifits here would be extremely helpful.

Also for clarification and as a side reference, i have never used ESXI, however i have used hyper v and vmworkstation. I am really looking forward to getting this box built so i can start playing around with that software

 

[Patrick]

Hey Sweet,

Generally looks good. Here are some thoughts:
1. CPU wise, there is a 50% price premium for the 3.2GHz to 3.4Ghz base speed bump, which ends up being <10%. If that 10% is going to get you to a new level of performance, then go for it. Otherwise, I would stick with the E3-1230.
2. Motherboard wise, look at the Tyan/ Supermicro offerings. KVM-over-IP makes everything much easier to troubleshoot and you'll need to purchase a ASMB5-iKVM to get that on the ASUS board.
3. RAID Controller/ RAID wise: you may want to consider getting something like the IBM M1015 instead as it is based upon a much more solid LSI chip and has eight ports instead of four. Another thing to think about is going RAID 10 instead of RAID 5 as controllers without onboard BBWC/ FBWC and "green" drives. That may be better from a performance perspective.

 

[SweetAction]

thanks for the response patrick,
i have a few more questions if thats ok.
1. are there any other architecture or design differences in the E3-1230 vs 1270? if not would it be wise for me to go with a dual socket mobo for the E31230 and just plan on having the availability of dropping a second cpu in the future if needed? I am sure the 10% performance will have a very minimal effect given its current application intent.
2. I dont have a lot of knowledge or experience with (keyboard video mouse?) over ip, however as i would understand it, it would allow me to control multiple machines from a single point. Is this accurate? it sounds interesting enough for me to try it, do i need any extra or special hardware besides the mother board? (IE special switch or keyboards ect) Also, do you have any good mobos in mind that i can use for this process, i am not extremely familiar with tyan and havent bought anything supermicro in years. are there any solid boards that are reliable and affordable that you would recommend? the only reason i was looking at that asus board was the 4 gigabit ports and the fifth lan port that supports IPMI, is there any realistic value in that anyways?
3. i haven't really looked at raid controllers for years, and i agree that a flash battery would be important. I happen to have this one laying around and it supports 3TB drives. Do you know of any that support BBWC/ FBWC and 3TB drives? would you recommend that i not use the coolspin drives or are the fine since i already have them?

 

[Patrick]

1. No, the big difference is the clock speed. The E3 series is LGA 1155 and single socket only at this point. Sandy Bridge-E will be Intel's replacement for the dual socket capable LGA 1366 platform.

2. See this Supermicro KVM-Over-IP piece. It allows you to do things like mount ISO's remotely as well as see the remote screen and use the keyboard/ mouse as if you were at the server. Basically, you can deploy machines remotely and do everything including BIOS changes and installing the OS over the network.
This Tyan S5510 review will give you an idea of one motherboard (and links to other LGA 1155 motherboards) with those features.

3. If you have that stuff laying round you might as well give it a try.

 

[SweetAction]

Thanks for your help patrick, it has been fantastic! I cant seem to get to the links you posted, either my firewall is flagging it or they are dead links?

 

[Patrick]

Try again. Apparently WordPress has started seeing memory usage spikes that are well in excess of 4x what it saw 2 months ago (although average is only about 20MB higher.) Bad news is about once a week I need to reboot the VPS and it is hard to troubleshoot since it is very sporadic. It should work now.

 

[SweetAction]

it looks like (if i understand correctly) the tyan board has a better remote interface then the super micro, and a larger variety of expansion slots. Since i only intend on using the one raid controller and possibly an ad on card for additional ethernet nic, the question i have is which board is better bang for buck on a reliability perspective. It looks like they have more or less similar capabilities unless i am missing something. I do thank you for pointing out KVM over ip as it looks to be a VERY helpful feature on these boards. also since the E3-1230 doesnt have integrated graphics chipset does that mean i need a dedicated gpu on both these boards?

It looks like i can pick up the E3-1230 for $240 at newegg. So if i can pick a rock solid mobo at around 200-300 (im flexible on spend here since im going for a lower cost cpu if the spend is worth it) ill be set. Only question is is the tyan boards increased cost worth it? or is there another comparable board I should be evaluating thats in between the two?

 

[SweetAction]

how would this board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813151246 compare to the one you linked?

I think they are bot s5512 but on newegg there seems to be two of them so im confused because the cheaper one (from what i see) appears to be a better board. I see:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813151246
AND
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ckTab=true&Keywords=(keywords)#scrollFullInfo

 

[SweetAction]

i found out what the difference was, and made a purchase. the second board had 4 ethernet ports and didnt support SAS. As i am using a raid card running SATA the SAS is un-needed and the extra ethernet/ lower cost made me go with the S5512GM4NR for 269.99. Thanks for all your help.

BTW server specs as of now will be:
Build’s Name: ESXI - sweet build
Operating System/ Storage Platform: ESXI 4.1, Win server 2008 R2
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 Sandy Bridge 3.2GHz LGA 1155 80W Quad-Core
Motherboard: TYAN S5512GM4NR ATX Server Motherboard LGA 1155 Intel C204
Chassis: Antec Three Hundred Illusion Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Drives: (4x) Hitachi Deskstar 3.5 Inch 3 TB CoolSpin SATA 6Gb/s
RAM: 16 GB (4x4GB) Crucial 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) ECC Unbuffered Server Memory Model
Add-in Cards: HighPoint RocketRAID 640 4 SATA Port PCI-Express 2.0 x4 SATA 6Gb/s RAID Controller
Power Supply: OCZ ModXStream Pro 500W Modular High Performance Power Supply
Other Bits: HDD will be set in RAID 5

I may try a better raid card down the road and through in different drives with a redundant psu when i have the cash for it.