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

[JimPhreak]

Spoke to soon. Changing that jumper did enable LAN1 and LAN2 but not LAN3 (10GbE) and LAN4 (10GbE). They don't show up in VMware or Windows (see pic) but when I connect them to my switch I do get amber and orange LEDs on them (constant not blinking).

Unfortunately I don't see any place in the BIOS where my NICs show up includnig the two that are working so I can't even go there to compare.

EDIT: It also appears that VMware isn't picking up my M.2 SSD either.

@Patrick, did you have any issues with regard to the 10GbE ports when you installed ESXi 6 or did they just work right from the get go?

 

[JimPhreak]

So the 10GbE NICs are not detected in ESXi 5.5/6 or Windows 8.1/Server 2012 R2. SuperMicro also doesn't offer any drivers for them on their website. So confused. It's almost as if they shipped a board with two 10GbE NICs that aren't supported yet.

 

[Patrick]

Check your PM. That should help.

 

[JimPhreak]

Check your PM. That should help.

Appreciate the Windows drivers @Patrick. However since Windows isn't even detecting the devices in device manager (as network adapters or even unknown devices), I can't install drivers.

 

[Patrick]

Right click install. @strh might be able to help.

 

[JimPhreak]

Ok so installing that made my Network Adapters go from this:

To this:

But still stuck on 2 network adapters.

Am I just being naive in thinking I was supposed to get 4 working NICs when I purchased this board? I've never worked with 10GbE so I'm not sure how exactly they work and/or if they are backward compatible with a 1GbE switch like the one I'm using.

If I'm mistaken I'm not sure this board will work for my needs because I need 4 working NICs in my server and I need to use the PCI-E slot for an HBA.

 

[OBasel]

Did you get the "special" drivers? If so, you should just be able to right click on the file, choose install and it should work fine.

I'm using mine as a Hyper-V server. No problems with the special driver. xeond-win64.zip or whatever it was. Worked great after I installed drivers. 10gbaseT is backwards compatible with 1gb.

 

[JimPhreak]

Did you get the "special" drivers? If so, you should just be able to right click on the file, choose install and it should work fine.

I'm using mine as a Hyper-V server. No problems with the special driver. xeond-win64.zip or whatever it was. Worked great after I installed drivers. 10gbaseT is backwards compatible with 1gb.

Yup, got the special drivers and you can see from the pic in my post above what my Server 2012 R2 install is showing after installing them. Still only have 2 working network adapters.

Could you show me a screen shot of what the network adapters in your Hyper-V Server's device manager look like?

 

[strh]

Yup, got the special drivers and you can see from the pic in my post above what my Server 2012 R2 install is showing after installing them. Still only have 2 working network adapters.

Could you show me a screen shot of what the network adapters in your Hyper-V Server's device manager look like?

Here's what my device manager looks like. This is for Windows 8.1 Enterprise 64bit.




Opened the zip, right clicked the inf file, select install and then reboot.

All adapters are enabled, have working IPs (1Gb for the moment as I've not completed my network setup).

Cheers
Simon

 

[JimPhreak]

Here's what my device manager looks like. This is for Windows 8.1 Enterprise 64bit.


View attachment 486

Opened the zip, right clicked the inf file, select install and then reboot.

All adapters are enabled, have working IPs (1Gb for the moment as I've not completed my network setup).

Cheers
Simon

Thanks for that screen shot @strh. Clearly something is wrong with my LAN3/4 NICs then. Either they're still somehow disabled on the motherboard or they're faulty.

 

[JimPhreak]

After reading through the manual at least 3-4 times and just exploring the board on my own it doesn't look like there is any way to enable/disable the two 10gbaseT NICs. So the fact that they are absent on all OS's I've tried tells me the board is defective. So looks like I'll be going forward with the RMA process after all .

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

 

[MiniKnight]

Maybe uninstall what it is using now, then reboot, do the INF that @strh said, then reboot? If you're seeing anything in Windows and using the same driver then it should work. I have about a dozen of these running Linux and Windows at work. And they are great.

 

[JimPhreak]

Maybe uninstall what it is using now, then reboot, do the INF that @strh said, then reboot? If you're seeing anything in Windows and using the same driver then it should work. I have about a dozen of these running Linux and Windows at work. And they are great.

Not sure I'm following what you mean by "uninstall what it's using now?"

If you look at my post here you'll see what Windows was reading before and after installing the INF that you're referring to. It shows the controller for the two 10gig NICs but not the NICs themselves.

I don't see how uninstalling/re-installing drivers will make any difference if the OS is not even detecting that there is hardware there but I will give it a shot anyway since I'm desperate haha.

 

[MiniKnight]

hardware there but I will give it a shot anyway since I'm desperate haha.

Well it IS seeing something there. Just not registering it correctly. I'd just uninstall the default or whatever it's using then re-try.

 

[JimPhreak]

This is what my device manager looks like right after installing Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard.

Spoiler: Pre- Drivers

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is post Chipset drivers install:

Spoiler: Post Chipset Drivers

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And this is after uninstalling all the network adapter drivers listed above and installing the special INF I got from Patrick:

Spoiler: Post NIC Drivers

As you can see, nothing I do gets those 10GbaseT NICs to show up.

 

[strh]

Maybe I missed this in the thread but some observations:

1) I never had to enable LAN1/LAN2 so odd to me they came disabled on your board.
2) LAN3/LAN4 are enabled via jumper JPTG1 10Gb Ethernet Enable Pins 1-2 (Enabled). Again, didn't have to do this for my board.

Cheers
Simon

 

[JimPhreak]

Maybe I missed this in the thread but some observations:

1) I never had to enable LAN1/LAN2 so odd to me they came disabled on your board.
2) LAN3/LAN4 are enabled via jumper JPTG1 10Gb Ethernet Enable Pins 1-2 (Enabled). Again, didn't have to do this for my board.

Cheers
Simon

This is about my 10-12th SuperMicro board and it's the first time I ever got a board with that jumper set incorrectly either. However it was definitely the case because I originally had ZERO network adapters showing up. After correcting the jumper for LAN1/LAN2 I was able to get those 2 to show up. The JPTG1 jumper came set in the correct position and I've tried switching that jumper around numerous times to no avail.

 

[JimPhreak]

Well would you looky what we've got here...

And all it took was me clearing the BIOS 3 more times and reseating both my RAM and M.2 SSD. Can't say I'm feeling too confident this board is 100% OK as of yet but it sure feels good to finally see those two NICs!

Now of course VMware doesn't detect them but I'm guessing I'll have to manually install the drivers before it will just like with Windows. However Windows does recognize my SM951 M.2 drive while VMware does not. Sounds like things may be shifting towards the Hyper-V route (at least with regard to this project).

 

[JimPhreak]

Alright making some progress with regard to getting VMware ESXi up and running. Was able to load the .vib for my SM951 SSD M.2 Controller and now that drive is detected and working.

Last thing remaining is getting these two 10GbE NICs installed and then I'm good to go.

 

[Diverge]

Alright making some progress with regard to getting VMware ESXi up and running. Was able to load the .vib for my SM951 SSD M.2 Controller and now that drive is detected and working.

Last thing remaining is getting these two 10GbE NICs installed and then I'm good to go.

Out of curiosity, are you booting off your SM951? I'm using a X10SDV-F motherboard.

I have an XP941, and can't get ESXI or Windows 8.1 to install to it. I can boot esxi off usb and use it as a datastore (using a custom iso w/ the sata .vib additions). ESXI won't see it at installation, and windows refuses to install to it (but sees it)... saying something about it not being a bootable disk.