Intel Xeon D-1500 Series Discussion

Patrick

Patrick

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miraculix said:
Good news for anyone running (or wanting to run) FreeNAS on X10SDV at 10GE... Intel X557 drivers just got backported to FreeNAS 9.3.1. Nightly, but seems to be running stable.

BUILD - X10SDV-4C-TLN2F Build | FreeNAS Community
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Yea that is the nice thing that these are in the ixgbe driver now. That means that it should be in every major OS release going forward since generally Intel drivers get updated.
 
JimPhreak

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Are there any soon to be released (as in available to purchase) mini-ITX boards with on board SFP+ from SuperMicro? I'm building a mini-itx NAS and want it to be 10GbE capable by next year and need to keep the one PCI-E expansion slot free in case I need to use an add-on storage controller.
 
Patrick

Patrick

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JimPhreak said:
Are there any soon to be released (as in available to purchase) mini-ITX boards with on board SFP+ from SuperMicro? I'm building a mini-itx NAS and want it to be 10GbE capable by next year and need to keep the one PCI-E expansion slot free in case I need to use an add-on storage controller.
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mITX - not that I am aware of. FlexATX would be a go: New Flex ATX Supermicro Xeon D motherboards
 
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Adam Zucker

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JimPhreak said:
Damn that's a bummer. I may need to shift my focus to good onboard storage that can support 8+ drives.
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Yea my plan was to throw two mini-itx boards in a dual board 1U chassis to use as ESX systems but would need SFP+ on them. Would be pretty dense if a board came out but I haven't seen anything yet either.
 
JimPhreak

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Adam Zucker said:
Yea my plan was to throw two mini-itx boards in a dual board 1U chassis to use as ESX systems but would need SFP+ on them. Would be pretty dense if a board came out but I haven't seen anything yet either.
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With that being said... Are there any mini-itx boards that support 8+ drives at 6Gbps natively?
 
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Adam Zucker

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JimPhreak said:
With that being said... Are there any mini-itx boards that support 8+ drives at 6Gbps natively?
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Almost all I have seen to date are 6 drives. HOWEVER I forgot about the upcoming Gigabyte boards which are Mini-ITX AND have SFP+ ports. According to my rep at Gigabyte, they should be released by the end of the month.

Don't know if this link will work below so I also listed all four models below that:
GIGABYTE B2B Service - Server Motherboard - BGA 1667

GIGABYTE - Server Motherboard - BGA 1667 - MB10-DS4 (rev. 1.0)
GIGABYTE - Server Motherboard - BGA 1667 - MB10-DS3 (rev. 1.0)
GIGABYTE - Server Motherboard - BGA 1667 - MB10-DS1 (rev. 1.0)
GIGABYTE - Server Motherboard - BGA 1667 - MB10-DS0 (rev. 1.0)
 
Patrick

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JimPhreak said:
With that being said... Are there any mini-itx boards that support 8+ drives at 6Gbps natively?
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The Xeon D basically has a Lynx Point PCH onboard (E3 V3 PCH) so it has only 6x 6.0Gbps.

It almost sounds like you should be looking at FlexATX or a mITX E3 V5 board w/ a 10Gb NIC.
 
Patrick

Patrick

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Adam Zucker said:
Almost all I have seen to date are 6 drives. HOWEVER I forgot about the upcoming Gigabyte boards which are Mini-ITX AND have SFP+ ports. According to my rep at Gigabyte, they should be released by the end of the month.
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It is Chinese new year so there is not a lot of production happening. I would expect early March to start seeing production boards from ASRock and Gigabyte. Gigabyte Launches four new Intel Xeon D motherboards - ServeTheHome - Server and Workstation Reviews
 
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Adam Zucker

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JimPhreak

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I will keep on the lookout. I have some time but would like to get building in the next month or so. Mini-itx is the only option for me as space is a serious issue for me being that this server will be sitting on my desk.
 
Patrick

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That makes sense and there are not many small FlexATX cases out there. I have a new FlexATX motherboard in the lab but cannot show pictures of it at the moment. It is certainly bigger than mITX but I do wonder if it would fit in a case like the DS380.
 
JimPhreak

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Patrick said:
That makes sense and there are not many small FlexATX cases out there. I have a new FlexATX motherboard in the lab but cannot show pictures of it at the moment. It is certainly bigger than mITX but I do wonder if it would fit in a case like the DS380.
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Yea even the DS380 is bigger than I'm looking for. I'm really just looking for a mini ITX board to go in a case that has a single 5.25" bay so I can put one of the Icy Dock 8 x 2.5" bay adapters in it. I really want this server to support 8 drives and be able to support 10GbE within the year.
 
JimPhreak

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Patrick said:
The Xeon D basically has a Lynx Point PCH onboard (E3 V3 PCH) so it has only 6x 6.0Gbps.

It almost sounds like you should be looking at FlexATX or a mITX E3 V5 board w/ a 10Gb NIC.
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@Patrick, what boards specifically were you referring to when referencing the mini-itx E3 v5 boards?

EDIT: Ahh I see, something like this board. Problem for me is the E3 is way overkill for my needs. I could go with something like the E3-1235LV5 (25w) but that's gonna run me $500 between the CPU and board. Wonder what the Gigabyte boards with the SFP+ on board are going to go for. Any guesses?
 
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Patrick

Patrick

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I did get pricing on the Gigabyte board but I think it was more along the lines of list price where we would expect distributors to have gotten significant discounts so I decided not to publish it and just wait for street pricing.

I do think that with the FlexATX SM boards in the market and the ASRock Rack boards there are now more options. Frankly, only those folks that need small tower servers are going to require mITX SFP+ since rackmount cases can easily accommodate FlexATX or larger motherboards. Given that market is a decent size when you add in companies like FreeNAS that sell mini tower appliances I think Gigabyte will do OK. I just think that there will be pricing pressure on their boards given the other options out there that will work fine in rackmount chassis.
 
Deslok

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JimPhreak said:
@Patrick, what boards specifically were you referring to when referencing the mini-itx E3 v5 boards?

EDIT: Ahh I see, something like this board. Problem for me is the E3 is way overkill for my needs. I could go with something like the E3-1235LV5 (25w) but that's gonna run me $500 between the CPU and board. Wonder what the Gigabyte boards with the SFP+ on board are going to go for. Any guesses?
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What about something like this? ASRock C2550D4I Mini ITX Server Motherboard DDR3 1600 / 1333 - Newegg.com
 
JimPhreak

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Patrick said:
I did get pricing on the Gigabyte board but I think it was more along the lines of list price where we would expect distributors to have gotten significant discounts so I decided not to publish it and just wait for street pricing.

I do think that with the FlexATX SM boards in the market and the ASRock Rack boards there are now more options. Frankly, only those folks that need small tower servers are going to require mITX SFP+ since rackmount cases can easily accommodate FlexATX or larger motherboards. Given that market is a decent size when you add in companies like FreeNAS that sell mini tower appliances I think Gigabyte will do OK. I just think that there will be pricing pressure on their boards given the other options out there that will work fine in rackmount chassis.
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Thanks for the insight @Patrick, it's much appreciated.


Deslok said:
What about something like this? ASRock C2550D4I Mini ITX Server Motherboard DDR3 1600 / 1333 - Newegg.com
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I looked at that board but only 2 of the 6 SATA ports are 6Gbps. If I'm making an all SSD storage server I don't want my storage interfaces being the bottleneck. I do think the Avaton is a great option for my needs I just can't seem to find one with the storage interfaces I want while also allowing me the ability to upgrade to 10GbE.
 
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