Supermicro X11SPH-nCTF

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Patrick

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It looks like the Supermicro X11SPH-nCTF is going to be one of our first motherboards to review. I got to see one in person today and it certainly looks awesome. LSI SAS + Intel SATA, 10GbE, and Oculink NVMe headers plus lots of expansion. This plus Xeon Bronze and Silver are going to put a lot of pressure on older generation DP storage boxes and higher-end Xeon D systems.

Here is the motherboard:
X11SPH-nCTF | Motherboards | Products - Super Micro Computer, Inc.
 
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T_Minus

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Do Oculink NVME connectors/cables exist or is this going to be the u2/whatever thing all over again :(
 

PigLover

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Jan 26, 2011
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If you need someone to take it off your hands after the review just let me know...I'd hate to see your lab get cluttered :)
 

Patrick

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I think it is mostly for backplane interconnects. @PigLover we have another UP system that is indeed very cool. 12x DIMM slots = 192GB using cheap 16GB DIMMs. Idle on that one is not going to be useful sadly :-/
 

T_Minus

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@Patrick ok, does that mean you don't know if you have to buy a retail part to get the cable or not?

That was the u.2 issue until we finally could get them from China or ppl went direct to amphenol, and now others sell them...
That's the issue I'm talking about.

If they come with a chassis for backplane that's awesome, but what if I buy the motherboard + backplane and need the cable??? This is the question I'm asking about if I wasn't clear before.

Thnx!
 

Patrick

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I have not seen Oculink to U.2 direct cables. I have seen chassis and systems that use Oculink to connect motherboard and backplane. The backplane does Oculink to U.2.
 

T_Minus

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Hmm, maybe I'm still not being clear. I too have seen Oculink on mobo and backplanes; I'm asking specifically about cable availability outside of getting it with a chassis. (IE: How it will affect us who DIY chassis with parts)

I'm using the u2 cable issue as an example, not asking if we can go oculink to u2, although that would be nice too :)
 

fmatthew5876

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I'm really excited about this board. The onboard SAS and 10gbe means I can ditch nearly all of my add-on cards. For my home freebsd zfs server, I couldn't imagine a better motherboard than this.

The main question is going to be whether to get the SFP+ or 10g Base-T version of the board.
 

Patrick

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@fmatthew5876 I have to say, I really like this platform. I would probably get the SFP+ version if buying for our lab since we use mostly 40GBE. It is also $35 less expensive.
 

K D

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Is this motherboard supported by ESXi and NAS distros (freenas / napp-it on omnios). I would like to explore the platform but if the support does not exist I will wait.
 

Patrick

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@K D do you mean official HCL support or will it work?

The only question I would have is on NIC drivers depending on the version. You may need to install a newer driver to get going depending on version.
 

K D

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I'm not worried about the HCL. Are drivers for all the components available?
 

Patrick

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I'm not worried about the HCL. Are drivers for all the components available?
Only one I am not sure of is the NICs. Will try it out, but they are Intel NICs so just need new driver package,
 
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JSNAS

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Dec 26, 2016
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Has anyone run FreeNAS on the X11SPH-nCTF yet? Does everything work ok (including NICs)?
 

MiniKnight

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NYC
It should work fine with the newest version based on FreeBSD 11.1. These types of motherboards get great support since Intel drivers get updated. I haven't tried myself tho.
 

I_D

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That much sexiness on one board. *drool*
Probably going to very expensive though. :(
I too would worry about all the on board stuff (especially the 10gbe) being supported in popular user cases like freenas, vmware etc.
If it all works, that would make one hell of a freenas, you'd have to build something epic with if you get it Patrick, make us all all jealous. :)
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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About $500
A few big resellers have it listed already.
The scalable boards ‘seen’ to be a good bit more expensive compared to 2011-3 boards even for the ones that don’t 10g etc.