Ideal 1U, 2-Node Xeon-D with 2x NVMe?

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Ray O

New Member
Dec 8, 2016
4
0
1
Sydney, Australia
Looking for a compact 1U dual node high availability type system
including two power supplies (either redundant or independent) with each node supporting:
- Intel Xeon-D: 8 or 16 cores
- 4x 32 GB ECC DDR4-2400
- 10Gb Ethernet (RJ45, not SFP+)
- 2x NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD’s (software RAID1), such as Samsung's SM963 or PM963.
- Hot swap 2.5" or 3.5" bays for additional storage.

Does such a thing currently exist on the market?

Have considered Supermicro's 1U TwinPro series,
however the AOC-SLG3-2M2 Add-on Card has not been validated/tested with the 10GbE X10DRT-PT board
and it appears two Xeon CPU's are required for using NVMe's via the PCIe slot,
which doubles Microsoft's SPLA (Service Provider Licence Agreement) per CPU licensing costs for
Windows Server virtual machines etc., according to Microsoft's SPUR (Services Provider Use Rights).
 

Ray O

New Member
Dec 8, 2016
4
0
1
Sydney, Australia
Thanks for your reply @Patrick & @_alex, from my understanding:

The "Supermicro HA Short Depth 1U Appliance Solution" is based on the: SuperServer E200-8D,
which doesn't have room for a low profile PCIe card, such as this for drive mirroring (RAID 1):
Samsung 950 PRO M.2 SSD in a PCIe slot - tested with Supermicro 5028D-TN4T & Lycom DT-120 M.2 to PCIe adapter.

Also there appear to be mixed reports using the newer Samsung 960 Pro:
Samsung 960 PRO/EVO/SM961 M.2 NVMe SSD disappearance workaround is to power cycle ...
Unfortunately, Supermicro may never validate these models, since they are not considered enterprise grade, even though it should work fine on a backup server, being rated around 0.3 DWPD and they do not have any 2TB enterprise versions available yet.

The "ecsus miniTwin Node-Server" doesn't have a low profile PCIe slot either.

The "HPE Edgeline EL4000 Converged Edge System" looks great, except that it's not readily available or priced competitively in Australia, and doesn't have standard 10 GbE RJ45 ports.


Currently considering at a few of these:
SuperServer 1028U-TNR4T+ (Complete System Only)
Supermicro SuperServer 1028U-TNR4T+ Review

Having 4x 10GbE ports provides flexibility with redundant external links and aggregation of 2 internal ports, such as syncing NVMe's at full speed with another node. For example the Intel DC P3600 2.5" series writes up to 1,700 MB/s, or approx. 14 Gb/s. However Supermicro seem reluctant to sell one of these systems with a single CPU to keep the Microsoft Windows Server SPLA costs low, since it's considered CTO (Configure To Order?), unless we buy them by the hundred like a Hyperscaler.

Still open to suggestions on the ideal hardware solution.
 

Evan

Well-Known Member
Jan 6, 2016
3,346
598
113
I Guess you could make your own chassis with a deeper 1u system, put 2 boards side by side, the difficulty is the extended / adapter you will need for the PCIe card.