FINAL Bachelor Build - Xeon D vSAN Cluster

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IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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SEXY! CONGRATS on the kiddos...err I mean wife :p

I ain't gonna lie, since bringing 3 bundles of joy into the world I now have abt 1/2 the 'geek out' time as I used to and not nearly as much energy after engaging them all day...working from home helps but still...enjoy the work/life/family/geek-out balance...it's a fine one.
I don't plan on starting a family for another few years but ya never know...the unexpected can always happen :).


I do like cases with trayless HDD baclplanes for home use. Only downside is that you need form-factor accurate adapters if you want to plug in 2.5" drives. Otherwise they are GREAT in an environment where things change a lot.
I have a few of the ICY Dock 2.5 to 3.5 adapters for the few SSD's I plan to use in this chassis. Also have the ability to mount 2-3 SSD's at the top of the HDD cages if I want but then I can't use the SAS backplane.
 
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Ramos

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Mar 2, 2016
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Congrats on getting married.

Remember the partial reason for doing it: You get one more rack to play with for life :)

I like your setup cause it is also easy on power-over-time and its quiet so if you two move in or live together in cramped spacing, then noise and the constant hammering of the power bill can take a toll on stressfull times.

I have a colleague who had to sell his personal server because of wifeys ultimatum so now he has a laptop and spends according to himself, "way too much on Amazon AWS!"

I am sooo blessed with having Azure and IBM partnership stuff that keeps me afloat till I get my own.

Did you pick a 1537 over a 1540/1541 because of availability or power reasons?
 
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IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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Congrats on getting married.

Remember the partial reason for doing it: You get one more rack to play with for life :)

I like your setup cause it is also easy on power-over-time and its quiet so if you two move in or live together in cramped spacing, then noise and the constant hammering of the power bill can take a toll on stressfull times.

I have a colleague who had to sell his personal server because of wifeys ultimatum so now he has a laptop and spends according to himself, "way too much on Amazon AWS!"

I am sooo blessed with having Azure and IBM partnership stuff that keeps me afloat till I get my own.

Did you pick a 1537 over a 1540/1541 because of availability or power reasons?
Thanks for the kind words :). Yes we live together and the power draw/heat creation of this setup was a big reason I chose it indeed.

I picked the 1537 because I needed 8 cores, SFP+, and a SAS storage controller. All the 1540/1541's come in just mini-itx so they only offer the ability to use either SFP+ or an HBA but not both.
 

miraculix

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Mar 6, 2015
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Nice! How is the rear clearance for the M-4160-ATX? I was seriously thinking about getting the 3120. Please post your impressions once it's fully running.
 

IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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Nice! How is the rear clearance for the M-4160-ATX? I was seriously thinking about getting the 3120. Please post your impressions once it's fully running.
It's pretty tight because I had to set the front rails back one notch to give the server handles and my switch some clearance from the door. The way I have it (front rail one notch back and back rail as far back as it goes) is definitely the least amount of racking depth I would need for the M-4160. Im using a right angle power cable on the PSU and luckily the IO area of this case is inset a bit to give those cable so extra room.

Many people have been asking for a review of this case so I'll probably write one up once I get everything hooked up and running for a few days. Unfortunately my D-1518 board isn't shipping till 4/7 [emoji17].
 
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whitey

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Jun 30, 2014
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Lookin' good! So are two 1537 nodes built awaiting the 1518?

HA, looked closer at built details, you DID get those dc s3500 800gb'ers I was suggesting :-D You'll be happy w/ them price/performance/capacity-wise.
 
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Ramos

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Mar 2, 2016
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I looked up your switch and it said 75W. I never realized how power hungry all these peripheral things are.

Is that a full tilt number?
Do you have any at-the-wall numbers on it for, say, hooking in 4 ports only?
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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1G switches are low power, 10G SFP+ also not so bad...
10G copper is power hungry, but I assume not in use ports don't really consume power.

It's almost ironic that network can use more power than the servers, in a DC environment I would not be surprised at all if running a lot of big legacy chassis network equipment.
 

IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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Lookin' good! So are two 1537 nodes built awaiting the 1518?

HA, looked closer at built details, you DID get those dc s3500 800gb'ers I was suggesting :-D You'll be happy w/ them price/performance/capacity-wise.
Yup! Got 3 of the S3500 800GB's for $650 total :D. I'm still waiting on all 3 motherboards (both 1537's and the 1518) so all the chassis' are just sitting there with nothing but drives and PSU's in them.


I looked up your switch and it said 75W. I never realized how power hungry all these peripheral things are.

Is that a full tilt number?
Do you have any at-the-wall numbers on it for, say, hooking in 4 ports only?
With 4 of the copper ports hooked up it's pulling 30w from the wall according to my kll-a-watt. I haven't hooked any of the SFP+ ports up yet so I'm not sure how much more power those will draw.
 

IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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Found the perfect sized magnetic dust filter for the bottom cutout of my rack. Also installed some fan intakes in the bottom using an AC Infinity 2U unit and the rack is pretty much just waiting for my firewall chassis and the motherboards to finish the servers.







 
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whitey

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Jun 30, 2014
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SEXY those 1537's they are! Those 4 minisas-HD connects per board? VERY sweet if so!
 

whitey

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THAT board is HOT...mind sharing what the pricepoint was and where your sourced from (not that I can afford that new-fangled gear) just curious if it's a 1K+ tag. Think I heard like $1100-1200.

That beast is like 'THE BOARD' I dreamed abt/envisioned (x's 3 OUCH) for a good 9-12 months (pretty much all last yr when all we had was 10G copper offerings)...in another life...
 

IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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THAT board is HOT...mind sharing what the pricepoint was and where your sourced from (not that I can afford that new-fangled gear) just curious if it's a 1K+ tag. Think I heard like $1100-1200.

That beast is like 'THE BOARD' I dreamed abt/envisioned (x's 3 OUCH) for a good 9-12 months (pretty much all last yr when all we had was 10G copper offerings)...in another life...
Got them for $900 each at WiredZone. Not a bad price at all if you ask me.

On a related note, I just found out that even though I added 2-day shipping for my D-1518 board (which shipped yesterday and would have been here by the weekend), SuperMicro still shipped it via Ground by mistake so now it's not coming till next Wednesday :(.
 

whitey

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That's a helluva deal as well IMHO for that feature-rich board.

Sorry to hear abt shipping snafu, par for the course from time to time it seems. Hope they refund you some shipping at least but I never hold my breath.
 

IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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That's a helluva deal as well IMHO for that feature-rich board.

Sorry to hear abt shipping snafu, par for the course from time to time it seems. Hope they refund you some shipping at least but I never hold my breath.
They already did. WiredZone has terrific customer service which is why I always order from them.