Supermicro X9DRi-LN4F+ and OS: Server 2012R2, CoreOS, CentOS

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Ian L

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Jan 31, 2018
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Hi everyone,

I'm looking at this server, which may be a good buy?

Supermicro X9DRi-LN4F+ - E5-2600 2U (Configure to Order)

It uses the Supermicro X9DRi-LN4F+ motherboard version v1.2. I'd be using 2x E5-2680 v2. Up to 512GB DDR3 RDIMM 1886 MHz.

There have been posts on here citing problems with that board running the more recent OS.

Has anyone managed to get any of these OS to run reliably?

Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows Server 2016
CoreOS Container Linux
CentOS 7.4

Should I be afraid? ;-)

Cheers,
Ian
 
Jeggs101

Jeggs101

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Dec 29, 2010
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Ian L

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Jan 31, 2018
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Jeggs101 said:
@Ian L

Good server. VERY expensive given current pricing.

They charge 450 GBP for each e5-2680 V2. They're under $200 each on ebay. SR1A6 INTEL XEON E5-2680V2 10 CORE 2.80 GHz 25M 8 GT/s 115W PROCESSOR | eBay

512GB they don't have an option for since they've only got 16GB DIMMs.

You can get 4 nodes in 2u for about the same price 2U Supermicro 6027TR-HTRF+ 4 NODE 8x XEON E5-2680 v2 10 core 256GB 4x 512GB SSD | eBay
Click to expand...
Hi Jeggs,

Many thanks for your advice. I was planning to go barebones with the server, and buy CPUs, RAM etc from eBay.

Does anyone know if there are problems running modern Linux (Red Hat/CentOS 7.4), CoreOS, Windows Server 2016 on this MoBo / server? - again, I have seen posts here complaining of problems.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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Tette

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Nov 8, 2017
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I have the same board. have tried Win10 Pro and Fedora f27 so far. Win10 worked good. didint use internal matrox graphics and windows has no drivers for it.

Fedora f27 worked good but had some weird issues with intel i350 nic. Nic ports change names for no reason between boots. like eth0 -> eno1, ant then all of the other nicports allso tried to change to eno1. ended up passing this to kernel at boot "net.ifnames=0 biosdevname=0" to use "legacy" style of nic interface naming. now it works as it should.

Using my board as workstation in custom Corsair AIR 540 chassi.
 
BLinux

BLinux

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Jul 7, 2016
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I have this board w dual e5-2680v2 running just fine with CentOS 7.4. I do have the NIC renaming issue mentioned above, but I think that's a Linux udev issue.
 
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gimkim

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Mar 28, 2018
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Tette said:
I have the same board. have tried Win10 Pro and Fedora f27 so far. Win10 worked good. didint use internal matrox graphics and windows has no drivers for it.

Fedora f27 worked good but had some weird issues with intel i350 nic. Nic ports change names for no reason between boots. like eth0 -> eno1, ant then all of the other nicports allso tried to change to eno1. ended up passing this to kernel at boot "net.ifnames=0 biosdevname=0" to use "legacy" style of nic interface naming. now it works as it should.

Using my board as workstation in custom Corsair AIR 540 chassi.
Click to expand...
I have just bought the same board "X9DRi-LN4F+".
But can't run windows10 on it. Windows7 and 2008 worked fine.
But with windows10 or anything newer than win7, I Always get the "ACPI BIOS ERROR" at the boot screen.
How did you manage to run windows10 on this board?
Which version of bios or any procedure to do?
I've have tried everything switching JMPT1 JMPT2 before/after flashing bios, etc. But none worked.
 
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jaysa

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May 25, 2018
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The X9DRi-LN4F+ gets ACPI-BIOS-ERROR when installing Windows 10, or Server 2016.
In my testing, both OS install, but then error when rebooting, apparently independent of any BIOS settings that I tried.

Supermicro published a workaround in November 2015 that they say ONLY works on a fresh OS install.

The link in that FAQ is now broken, however I confirm W10 and Svr16 both install using the later Intel chipset 10.1.2.10, which is readily found at present. No ACPI Bios errors at all now :) My board is on BIOS 3.2 with dual E5 V2 cpus and 96GB RAM.

Steps I followed were:
Reset BIOS by removing battery and shorting connectors (can't hurt)
Set ACPI sleep mode to S1 in BIOS
Set AHCI boot mode for the boot SSD in BIOS
Disconnect network and IPMI cables
Usual Fresh Install of OS to SSD
Do not reboot
Instead copy over chipset driver 10.1.2.10 by USB stick and install
Check this has taken in Device Manager
Reboot new OS from SSD
Reconnect network cables

Wish I'd found that earlier - would have saved me 10+ hours head scratching !!

Props to DaveWolfs for this in this related thread for the X10DAI
 
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jaysa

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May 25, 2018
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Tette said:
I have the same board. ... didnt use internal matrox graphics and windows has no drivers for it.
Click to expand...
The Matrox graphics chip dates from the 90s and is often used by server manufacturers as it's cheap - who would need a half decent graphics setup on a server after all?

But it's low resolution, low display rate and pre-WDDM, so doesn't play well with e.g. DisplayLink USB external screens.

I overlooked this when planning a high performance workstation based on the X9DRi-LN4F+ ...

The default Windows driver for the G200 goes to 1280x1024 resolution, which gives a blurry congested desktop with today's complex GUIs on a Full HD screen. Screen painting is fine for static images, but expect tearing when moving windows around and scrolling, and don't bother for videos. You'll want a GPU card ...

There is some good news.
A technique here developed by Michael Croes lets you up the resolution to 1920 x 1080 (or other intermediate resolutions).

I ran Dell's Driver_08MVF_WN32_4.00.01.004_1.0.EXE from here (didn't uninstall the Windows driver first for fear of breaking things).

Then opened regedit and Searched for: "Mga.SingleResolutions"
Edit that entry and add (for 1920x1080): "80 07 38 04"
Do this for ALL "Mga.SingleResolutions" instances - there are several.

Then right click in the desktop to change resolution .
You now have onboard Full HD graphics - albeit tearing if anything moves ...

Doesn't break secondary video output for me (FirePro W4100 / Server 2016 / Dual E5 V2 / BIOS 3.2)

hope this helps ...
 
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