Hi there everyone!
This is my first post here. I am considering building an ESXi/FreeNAS setup, and after reading a lot, I decided - almost - to buy the Supermicro X11SDV-4c-TP8F. I plan to install it on a Fractal Design 804. My original plan was to get a X11SDV-4C-TLN2F on a Fractal Design node 304, but I wasn't sure if that'd be future proof enough, specially because of the amount of PCI expansion and M.2 slots, so I decided to go for the bigger one, with the advantage of having more airflow.
My main concern here is regarding passthrough.
- Which controllers/devices are available for passing through to a VM under ESXi and this board?
- Will I need a HBA so that I can allocate disks directly to the FreeNAS VM? If not, if I manage to use passthrough of the SATA devices, will I still be able to boot from an M.2 SSD?
I am worried about being able to add SSD/HDD's in the future that are meant for the other VM's, so I won't want them allocated to the FreeNAS VM.
My other concern is cooling. I've read a lot of other users' experience with cooling it, but no one seems to have used some of the cooling heatsinks from Supermicro, such as this passive heatsink and also this active one. My question is, will they work with this board and keep the CPU cool? About the active one, is it too noisy?
Sorry for so many questions.
This is my first post here. I am considering building an ESXi/FreeNAS setup, and after reading a lot, I decided - almost - to buy the Supermicro X11SDV-4c-TP8F. I plan to install it on a Fractal Design 804. My original plan was to get a X11SDV-4C-TLN2F on a Fractal Design node 304, but I wasn't sure if that'd be future proof enough, specially because of the amount of PCI expansion and M.2 slots, so I decided to go for the bigger one, with the advantage of having more airflow.
My main concern here is regarding passthrough.
- Which controllers/devices are available for passing through to a VM under ESXi and this board?
- Will I need a HBA so that I can allocate disks directly to the FreeNAS VM? If not, if I manage to use passthrough of the SATA devices, will I still be able to boot from an M.2 SSD?
I am worried about being able to add SSD/HDD's in the future that are meant for the other VM's, so I won't want them allocated to the FreeNAS VM.
My other concern is cooling. I've read a lot of other users' experience with cooling it, but no one seems to have used some of the cooling heatsinks from Supermicro, such as this passive heatsink and also this active one. My question is, will they work with this board and keep the CPU cool? About the active one, is it too noisy?
Sorry for so many questions.