Gigabyte GA-C1007UN-D

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Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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I used the same Gigabyte system board, put the motherboard in a Apex MI-008 case, couple of 480gb SSD.
It is running Xpenology ( open-source Synology OS ) as my iPXE iSCSI boot server. Fast and cheap.

No more local OS boot disk for me.
I used the Xpenology web GUI to assign various iSCSI LUN (contained different flavor OS) to various iSCSI target.
Now, I could booted Windows 2012R2 or vsphere or any OS with just few mouse click.

BTW, the Gigabyte run ESXi5.1 and ESXi5.5 (with realtek lan driver customized ISO )
 

MiniKnight

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Mar 30, 2012
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I would love to hear more about how you did this. I want to do something almost the same.
 

Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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I was planning to write few posts regarding my cheap lab setup. Thanksgiving holiday got into the way.
My name is Bob, I am 58 and retired in year 2000 from working in IT field for 20years. I am addicted to buying and playing with IT equipment.
I lived near Frys electronic store, that doesn't help with my addiction problem.

I purchased 3 Dell C6100 in May, and few other HP servers as well. Every time someone post in a good deal in section, my money flying out of my wallet.
All I am using for my equipment is to mess around and not for any production use. So max performance is not my highest priorities.

Let me describe my lab iPXE boot setup. I am running Xpenology on 2 HP N40L 5x3TB drives , 3 servers make from AMD FM1 motherboard and A4, or A8 CPU ( Year 2012 black friday specials $25 motherboard and $25 AMD A4 CPU) and 6x3TB drives , 1 Ggiabyte ITX with SSD. BTW, the AMD FM1 systems work great and low power as well.

If you have a real Synology SAN, then you can skip this part. Otherwise take a look at the Xpenology forum.
XPEnology DS3612xs DSM 4.2 build 3211++ (repack v1.2)

I compare the Xpenology vs Miscrosoft iSCSI target vs Starwind free version.
The Xpenology fit into my lab the best.
Pro:
work really well with low end cpu and motherboard (Frys special) that I could pickup for few peanuts.
Web GUI to assign iSCSI LUN to target , faster than using Window copy and paste
Able to assign "friendly name" to iSCSI LUN and Target. i.e. name "WS12R2-Sysprep" to iSCSI LUN1 , or Node1 to a iSCSI target
Clone iSCSI LUN, save disk space and time.
example: 12 Window 2012R2 OS image, do not require 12 x 10gb, only the parent iSCSI LUN is 10gb, the child iSCSI LUN is not a full copy.

That's it for now, more on iPXE tomorrow.
 

MiniKnight

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Mar 30, 2012
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Great post!

It may be worth making your own guide thread too since that's easier to search for after the fact. I ordered two of these to give a try.
 

MiniKnight

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Mar 30, 2012
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Cool. Maybe DIY builds? Seems to fit there most

Can't wait wait to learn how to do this
 

PigLover

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Jan 26, 2011
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Would LOVE to see your PXE/iSCSI guide and thread! As far as I can tell there isn't a good/complete/simple guide to building a lab like this anywhere out on the web. Lots of bits/pieces but nothing complete, coherent and simple.
 

Biren78

Active Member
Jan 16, 2013
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Would LOVE to see your PXE/iSCSI guide and thread! As far as I can tell there isn't a good/complete/simple guide to building a lab like this anywhere out on the web. Lots of bits/pieces but nothing complete, coherent and simple.
I agree 100%. I don't want to clutter Bob's guide postings here: http://forums.servethehome.com/diy-server-builds/2786-ipxe-iscsi-diskless-boot.html but I can't wait to see this. Specifically I want to be able to:
a. Boot to a boot manager that would default to a Linux LiveCD but let me pick installation for other OSes like Windows
b. Get everything working so I can boot servers directly from ISCSI stores on the NAS

Those may seem simple enough but total pain to piece together and I fail every time.
 

Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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Got mine today. I think I now officially have an armada of mini-ITX motherboards floating around. Will get Linux installed as soon as possible.

Runs quiet wow!
 

Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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I used the Gigabyte motherboard with ESXi 5.5, 8gb memory, 3 Windows (w8.1 and ws2012r2) VM, the little Celeron didn't sweat.
Although I wasn't running anything but Firefox web browser.
 

Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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cat /proc/cpuinfo

patrick@celeron:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfoprocessor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 58
model name : Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 1007U @ 1.50GHz
stepping : 9
microcode : 0x15
cpu MHz : 800.000
cache size : 2048 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer xsave lahf_lm arat epb xsaveopt pln pts dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase smep erms
bogomips : 2993.24
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
I wonder if I should make a new thread on this one?
 

Patrick

Administrator
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Dec 21, 2010
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For those wondering about power consumption:

18.1w Idle with 2x 4GB DDR3 at 1333MHz
27.8w CPU cores 100% load