Small Form Factor for XEON E3/C204?

[d1c1ple]

Hi All,

Thanks in advance for any feedback. Looking to build a few shuttle sized workstations powered by E3-1230/35 CPU's but don't see any SFF mobo's to pair with. Shuttle has an H67 powered model SH67H3; if I go that route I would want to use i7-2600 possibly.

Any other SFF offerings in the market please let me know.

IPMI would be nice to have but not a requirement for my use case. Mostly plan for ESXi use hosting several VM's.

 

[cactus]

http://ark.intel.com/products/60637/Intel-Server-Board-S1200KP

Seems like you could make a nice little box out of one of these.

 

[mobilenvidia]

SuperMicro Micro ATX
or
Tyan Micro ATX ?

True server boards, where you won't be playing any games with no PCIe 16x slots and integrated 2D graphics.

 

[d1c1ple]

Thanks will check those out. Not looking for gaming; just home setup for virtualization related setup. Seems the E3's have VT-d, AES-NI and some other instructions that most of the desktop SB i5/i7's don't have.. i'll keep hunting!

 

[groove]

Does anyone have an LSI 3442 and Intel® Server Board S1200KP

I've already got burnt by the X9SCM not recognizing an LSI 3442 card that I have. Now rather then buying a new RAID controller card, I'm considering moving over to the ITX form factor for my build. Does anyone have both of these components to test if they play nicely with each other ? If someone can test this combination and post their findings, I'll appreciate it.

 

[dswartz]

No info on debug info you got trying to find out why the bios doesn't recognize the board? Seems strange to me to just throw the whole thing out with no attempt to diagnose why. If you did, you didn't post any of the steps/info you took/got, so it's hard to help with that. Then again, maybe you're just omitting all the painful stuff, but it's kind of hard to know without info...

 

[emc]

groove .... seems odd that a 1068e based card would not work on the X9SCM. I have IBM BR10i & LSI 3081E-R both have worked on numerous boards Tyan S5510, ASUS P8B WS, Supermicro PDSML-LN1 & a couple of desktop boards. If you could post some details maybe the "collective" could be of some help. If I have researched the board you have correctly it is a LSI SAS/SATA 4i4e 1068e board ... so basically a 4i4e version of the 3081E-R card I have? It has been rock solid with everything I have tried to use it in other than an old Intel 965 based board.

Good luck on finding the right solution!

 

[groove]

dswartz and emc, sorry I couldn't reply earlier as I've been out of town for the last few days. Well I'm back now so I'll give you some more background. Hopefully one of you can help me out. emc - you are spot on the dollar that it's mostly an '1068e' based board with 4i(nternal) and 4e(xternal) SAS connectors.

The controller itself has been rock solid on a P915 board that I had running as a file server for the past 2 years. I wanted to upgrade to an SB based solution (the older P915 was just too power hungry for 24x7 light duty file server needs), so I went ahead and purchased the X9SCM, only to find out that the board does not recognize the LSI controller. The LEDs on the controller light up just fine etc, but I can't 'Cntrl-C' into the bios.

I'm running Solaris Express 11 (svn_151a) and the OS just does not recognize the controller either. The controller was automatically detected when it was setup under SE11 on the P915. I did run a quick test by plugging in a Dell PERC 5/i and that seemed to work (at least the bios was initialized). But it simply does not recognize the LSI 3442. I have updated the MB's BIOS to 1.1a (which I believe is the latest) and have even flashed the 3442's bios/fw to the latest from LSI's website (I had to do that on an Asus Z8NA-D6C - both the P915 and the X9 gave me a 'PAL' error when I tried to flash the bios using sas2flash).

I've tried posting the above information on other boards, but no one seems to understand why I'm running into this issue. I tried disabling the onboard Cougar controller and ALL the onboard Ethernet controllers. But with no luck. I would be great if you guys can guide me on next steps. I've gone through the pain, but don't mind going through it again. I really need a controller (I need to add 2 more disks to my setup and have used up all the onboard ports). But with the luck I've had so far, I'm afraid to buy another controller only to run into other issues. emc/dswartz, if you have any pointers, I'm all ears.

Thanks for the help. emc - can you confirm if the BR10i is recognized / works on an X9SCM? If someone can confirm that, then I don't mind selling my 3442 to swap it out with a BR10i.... But would surely like make my 3442 work as it's a great card and just loved it's performance this far.

 

[mobilenvidia]

The OptionROM looks to be still not loading on that Motherboard.
But why does it refuse to load is what is the issue.
Is there enough room to load it
Is it conflicting with system BIOS resources

Why go with the older SAS controllers ?
I'd got for either a IBM M1015 (LSI9240 based) or even Dell H200 (LSI9211) based
The M1015 can be had fairly cheaply on ebay, probably the better overall option for options it will run at.
The H200 is more elusive at a good price

 

[emc]

groove ... sorry but I don't have a X9SCM to test on (have Tyan S5510 & ASUS P8b WS) .... I agree with mobilenvidia if you end up buying a new HBA then the M1015 would be a better long term investment due to its support for >2TB drives and is a PCIe 2.0 board. It is however about 2x (or more) the going ebay rate for a BR10i.

I do have problems getting CNTRL-C to work on my LSI based boards but I read a trick to get to it by setting the BOOT order in the MB BIOS so that there is NO bootable device. For some reason then the CNTRL-C will work. It worked for me. Then you just reset to the correct BOOT order.

 

[groove]

mobilenvidia and emc,

Thanks for your responses. emc - I'll try the work around you posted tonight and let you know how it goes. I plugged the 3442 back into the server at lunch and tried all the slots again thinking that I might have over looked something. But it still won't show up. I agree that the M1015 is a better long term investment. But I really do need just 2 extra 3 GBPS sata ports that are compatible with Solaris Express 11. I really don't have huge storage requirements - 4 TB (using 6 1 TB drives) is really more than what I need for the next 2 years. So I'll look at higher end cards then. What I really need to do is free up my on board 6 gbps ports so that I can install a couple of SSD. That should be sufficient for the next 2 - 3 years. I'd rather keep the cost down....

 

[emc]

more thoughts ... is "Force BIOS" set in MB BIOS? Try a different PCIe slot (your first 2 nearest CPU are x8 & the other 2 are x4). Do you have IT or IR firmware flashed? Version P21 is available now ... dont forget to update mptsas.rom at the same time. Flashing IT (unless you really need the RAID 0/1/10 support) makes it a "dumb" HBA .... maybe will help. I know you have probably tried some combo of all of these things so please dont take offense ... just doing a brain dump. In reality this really doesnt make any sense ... the LSI 1068e based HBAs are the most common out there & are supported by just about everything. You have a premier server MB. Let me know what I can do to help ....

Just found .... http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.0 ... maybe you have already seen it. Looks like a wealth of info!

 

[groove]

emc,

no offense taken at all. I appreciate the brain dump - That might contain something that I've overlooked - So feel free to fire away.....

well - I believe I tried both ways 'Force BIOS' and without. But it didn't work. I'll try it again and see if it helps. And yes, I did try different slots (in fact all of them). And yes also to the firmware - it's set to 'IT'. I've verified that too.

Seriously, I don't care if the BIOS get's activated at POST or not. I can live with that because I just want the card to make the disks attached to it available to the OS. That's my final goal. So if the BIOS does not get initiated at POST time it's fine. And you're right. It does not make sense. It's a standard 1068e based HBA. That's what's so frustrating.

I did notice that P21 is been released. It'll be a couple of days before I can re-flash the card (I have to open up a desktop to access the m/b that allows me to flash the card and and wife needs the desktop). So I'll give that a shot when I can get to the desktop.

Thanks for the link. No I have not read that thread. But will do and see if it contains anything that can help my situation.

Thanks again for your input. I'll be glad when this is behind me.

In the meantime, if someone can confirm that the BR10i works on the X9SCM, I'll just save the frustration and bit the bullet and pick that up and move forward..... But in the meantime, feel free to keep the suggestions coming. I'll keep working at it until it's resolved, one way or the other.....

 

[emc]

Dumb question ... have you filed a Trouble Ticket with Supermicro? Maybe they have seen this before??? I would (as you have stated) hesitate to invest in another 1068e based board without verification that it works on your board.

Best of Luck!!

 

[groove]

Yes, I have opened a trouble ticket with Supermicro. No response yet. I plan to send an email to support@supermicro.com as well to see if they'll respond.

In the meantime, I've installed the card on my Desktop (Asus Z8NA-D6C) to update the card's firmware to P21 revision. Now here's where it get's even more wierd. My card is a (B1) version :

SASFLASH -list give the following output :

C:\Users\GROOVE\Downloads\SAS3442ER>sasflash -list

****************************************************************************
LSI Corporation SAS FLASH Utility.

SASFlash Version 1.30.00.00 (2011.08.24)

Copyright (c) 2006-2011 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved.
****************************************************************************

Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS 1068E(B1):

Controller Number: 1
Controller: 1068E(B1)
PCI Address: 00:09:00:00
SAS Address: 500605b-0-0027-2850
NVDATA Version (Default): 0x2d03
NVDATA Version (Persistent): 0x2d03
Product ID: 0x2204
Firmware Version: 01.32.00.00
NVDATA Vendor: LSILogic
NVDATA Product ID: SAS3442E
BIOS Version: 06.34.00.00
BIOS Alternate Version: N/A
EFI BSD Version: N/A
FCODE Version: N/A

Finished Processing Commands Successfully.
Exiting SASFlash.

C:\Users\GROOVE\Downloads\SAS3442ER>

And the P21 driver does not have a firware file for the B1 version of the 1068 (SASFLASH fails stating the 3442ETB1.fw is missing). I now wonder if it's my card that's too old a revision and that's why it's not supported....

I also noticed in the output of the sasflash -list the following 2 lines :

EFI BSD Version: N/A
FCODE Version: N/A


I wonder if the missing EFI BSD / FCODE is causing the X9SCM to trip up......

 

[RimBlock]

http://ark.intel.com/products/60637/Intel-Server-Board-S1200KP

Seems like you could make a nice little box out of one of these.

This is a nice little server board although it uses the C206 chipset requiring an i3-21XX or E3-12X5 processor with inbuilt graphics (the E3-12X0s do not have on chip graphics with the exception of the E3-1260L). The board is also cheaper than the Supermicro offerings and the ones Supermicro currently have are either bigger than mITX and support the C20X chipset or are based on the QM67 chipset (Q Mobile 67) and require mobile processors. The Intel board will allow ECC ram but does not demand it so non-ECC with also work fine. One of the two network controllers is supported by ESXi 5.0 out of the box and the other can be hacked if you wish to play with the driver files. Putting this board with an i3 or E3-12X5 processor in a small case like the Antec ISK100-90 with some ram and a 2.5" drive or two makes a very powerful, tiny ESXi box that can fit in a small bag and so is very portable. Put the combination in a bigger case and you can add wither a dual or quad port network card (Intel ET series are good) or a SAS/SATA card for chaining more drives and as the board and CPUs (E3 only not i3) support VT-d directed virtulized IO, you can pass single network ports direct to VMs bypassing the ESXis slower networking or pass a storage controller and run a NAS with dedicated drives whilst running other VMs off other drives connected to the motherboard.

I have built and supplied the tiny Antec ISK100-90/Intel S1200KP/i3-2125T to a few companies wanting small portable ESXi test servers with a low power footprint and I have built larger units requiring ECC ram, ESXi, VT-d and a more meaty CPU. All work well, are cheaper than the Supermicro equivalent and to me the only limitation is the single PCIe slot but that is the limit on most mITX boards due to the size constraints. Some companies are adding mPCIe and mSATA slots now to try and mitigate this issue although not so much on server offerings yet. There is also the Portwell Wade 8011 which is a nice mITX board but it needs to be bought in bulk and is around the same price as the Supermicro offerings.

RB

 

[Patrick]

Thanks for the update RB. One really interesting note is that I've been working with a Supermicro CSE-502L-200B chassis. It is supposed to be an Atom optimized layout but I think it will fit a mATX board (will be trying this weekend.) About the same price as the ISK100 and is rackmount ready.

 

[RimBlock]

Nice find Patrick.

That could be pretty useful. Will have to check the local distributors pricing over here.

On a side note, I am building a server fro a client using the 813MTQ-600CB which is also a short length being only 19.8" with 3x3.5" hot swap bays. I like it a lot and suspect it would probably fit in a network cabinet rather than requiring a 42U like my Norco 4220 does.

I have just finished building my WHS-2011 box around an Intel DH67CF mITX board (2 SATA II, 2xSATA III, 1x eSATA header and 1xEsata rear). Added a M1015 and put it all in a Fractal Design R2 case. As the case has two rear PCI slots, I can use the second for a SFF-8087 -> SFF-8088 converter and chain a DAS to the unit via the second M1015 port. I will also be getting in an Intel DQ67EP next week for my ESXi rebuild although I have not yet decided on a case. I have 4x2.5" drives to fit.

RB

 

[Patrick]

I am still trying to capture the Supermicro CSE-502L-200B power supply noise. It is not that loud, but it does make an appreciable hum.

 

[RimBlock]

Before I got the M1015 flashed and working in a machine residing in the 813MTQ-600CB it used to halt just after the SAS controller finished all its BIOS checks. The problem was that it caused the 1U cases 4x 40mm fans to sit there on 13,000 rpm continuously whilst I tried to troubleshoot the issue.

It sounded like an army of angry bees riding to war on the back of a cat which had been glued to the rotor blades of a helicopter (they love the smell of warm honey in the morning ).

Thinking was difficult but luckily flashing the M1015 sorted out all the issues with booting and the case, after the initial startup burst, runs surprisingly quiet.

I have just replaced my HTPC case with a Lian-Li PC-Q08B as I can put a decent video card in there and play the games on the 100" projector screen with surround sound. The Antec ISK310-150 is now free and I can pair it with the DQ67EP which is due in tomorrow to build the new mini-ESXi server. The case has one low profile PCI slot on the rear so I can add my dual port ET network card for VT-d passthrough. Should do the job quite well.

RB