Jim's Phreak of a mini-ITX AIO VM/Storage server

[JimPhreak]

Build’s Name: Jim's Phreak of a Mini-ITX Bad@$$ AIO VM/Storage Server

Operating System/ Storage Platform: VMware ESXi 5.5 (maybe 6)
CPU: Intel Xeon D-1540 2.0Ghz 8-core SoC
Motherboard: SuperMicro X10SDV-TLN4F
Chassis: SuperMicro Mini-tower CSE-721TQ-250B
SSDs: Intel 730 480GB SSD (x2) + M.2 SSD (undecided on this)
HDDs: 4 x 8TB Seagate Archive (shingled) drives
RAM: 64GB (32GB x 2) Samsung DDR4-2133 RDIMMs
Add-in Cards: IBM ServeRAIDM1015
Power Supply: Built in 250w
Other Bits: 1-2 USB boot drives for ESXi/unRAID

Usage Profile: This will be an All-in-one VM and storage server for my home network. VM's will include pfSense, unRAID, WS 2012 R2, Media Server (Plex / Subsonic), Backups, Torrents, as well as other test VMs.

Other information: The main goal of this server was to consolidate all my home network needs into a single (small) physical server. This will not only do that by upgrading my current setup but also give me additional options for the future (10Gbe, twice the cores, 4 times the RAM capacity, 25% more usable storage space).

Most parts are on their way except for the 8TB shingled drives (still have something ironing out to do on the unRAID side of things) and an M.2 SSD I've still yet to decide on.

Should be fun in the coming 1-2 weeks .

 

[CreoleLakerFan]

is jealous

 

[William]

I have one of those boards here right now, I love it. I need to get one of those boxes for it.

Very nice !

 

[Entz]

Impressive ...Most Impressive (To be read in a Darth Vader voice).

Gotta love what you can fit in a tiny chassis these days. I feel that my days of having a large rack are coming to an end lol...

 

[JimPhreak]

Yea it's pretty crazy. And to think that I'm going from 8 * 3.'5" (7 * 3TB + 1 * 500GB) drives to just 4 yet gaining 11TB in raw storage .

 

[whitey]

Happy for you, sad for me that I can't get this toy...yet (<---KEY WORD)

 

[JimPhreak]

Happy for you, sad for me that I can't get this toy...yet (<---KEY WORD)

Touche .

 

[TeeJayHoward]

You probably already know this, but be sure that the shingled drives significantly reduced performance is acceptable for your use case. I personally wouldn't want to store VMs on them.

 

[JimPhreak]

You probably already know this, but be sure that the shingled drives significantly reduced performance is acceptable for your use case. I personally wouldn't want to store VMs on them.

Yea I would never store VMs on them, that's what the SSDs are for. However they are great for static storage or any data that you'll be writing sequentially which is exactly what most of mine is (media).

 

[JimPhreak]

Received the Chassis/board combo today. Installed RAM and M.2 SSD. Trying to install ESXi 6 but some thing seems wrong.

1) I'm getting no sensor readings at all in the IPMI Viewer
2) The M.2 drive doesn't seem to be detected in the BIOS
3) The two 10 gig ports have non-stop flashing lights with no cables connected to them and none of my NICs are detected by the ESXi 6 installer

Not a good start to things.

 

[kroem]

Well... what would we all be doing with our spare time if it was not for troubleshooting?

 

[JimPhreak]

Well... what would we all be doing with our spare time if it was not for troubleshooting?

Too true. I was hoping I'd be able to mess around a little bit today remotely from work which was why I was just hoping to get ESXi installed on it last night. I can still obviously access everything from IPMI however I may need to try resetting the CMOS or something when I get home. Something seems very off with this board. Praying it's something stupid and I don't have to RMA it because that is really going to delay this project.

 

[Patrick]

That is really strange behavior. At the very least the ESXi installer should have no problem seeing the gigabit ports since those are Intel i350-am2 based.

Did you try any other OS? When I have issues with hardware I start with some Windows variant TBH as that takes away most of the potential software problems off the table.

 

[JimPhreak]

Thanks for chiming in @Patrick. I just heard back from SuperMicro and they are telling me that the flashing activity lights on the 10 Gig ports is a known issue. They also told me to try installing Windows as you mentioned to see if the M.2 drives shows up there so I'm going to try that next.

One bright spot is the sensors appear to be working now as I"m getting temp readings now.

 

[JimPhreak]

So good news and bad news. The good news is the Samsung SM951 M.2 drive appears to be working as the Windows installer detects it as a drive option to install Windows on. However, the bad news is that even before that point Windows displays an error message that no network adapters are being detected just like the ESXi installer did. Clearly something is wrong with my NICs.

 

[T_Minus]

They're enabled in BIOS?

 

[JimPhreak]

They're enabled in BIOS?

I'll be honest, I don't see anywhere in the BIOS to enable/disable the NICs. However IIRC I don't remember seeing that option on any of my other SM boards either. However it's been a while since I messed with the BIOS of a SM board so I could be mistaken.

 

[Patrick]

Hmmm... PCIe devices in BIOS is usually my go-to cross vendor place to look for that.

 

[JimPhreak]

Great news! It turns out the board just came shipped with the jumper to enable/disable LAN ports set to disabled. I was reading the jumper numbers wrong so it looked like it was set correctly but it wasn't. Once I set that jumper to the correct pins I was good to go.

Boy do I feel relieved because after contacting the retailer about a possible RMA they said SuperMicro wouldn't have any stock of these boards for another 1-2 weeks.

So now that all that is behind me, time to get going on this server!

P.S. I can't get over how tiny this system is. It really is amazing how much I'll be able to do with a system that isn't much bigger than a toaster!

 

[T_Minus]

LOL, hey at-least it was something simple.

I'll take that anyway instead of RMA or swapping parts!!