My new ESXi (5.1) server:
This will help with pending research for 2013
NOTES:
Reasons behind going with the Xeon-E3 CPU (instead of Xeon-E5 or AMD-G34 ) :
- Price… E5 CPUs are “premium” priced. The E5 did more than required (don’t need x16 PCI-e, nor 8 DIMM slots). Why pay the premium price for unused features? A fast E3 appeared to cover CPU/processing requirements. And, a good SuperMicro board provided sufficient PCIe slots (2 @ 8x and 2 @ 4x)
- Following apparent standards. Though I wanted a AMD-G34… (quad memory channel, reasonably priced, etc.), most of my clients have Xeon servers. I needed something “standard” for testing/benchmarks.
- Though preferring dual CPU server motherboards – the E3 doesn’t support 2x configuration. And, the 2 x E5 setup is too expensive given all that extra horsepower just sits idle most of the time. I also wanted something that doesn’t heat up the office during the summer.
- Saving $$$ with the E3 supported rationalization for the more expensive RAID controller. The bottleneck on this server WILL NOT be I/O! The new RAID controller is fast. I’ll also be adding a 2x Intel Gigabit NIC for network pass-through (though motherboard does have two adapters).
Configuration
ESXi:
5.1.0
Motherboard:
Supermicro X9SCM-IIF-O
BIOS version: R 2.0a (shipped with current) – NOTE: VT-d is turned “off” by default (switched this “on” via BIOS-config)
CPU:
Xeon E3-1270 V2 3.5GHz
RAM:
4 x Samsung DDR3-1600 8GB/1Gx72 ECC M391B1G73BH0-CK0
RAID:
LSI 9260-8i
Hard Drives:
2 x WD VelociRaptor WD6000HLHX 600GB
2 x WD VelociRaptor WD5000HHTZ 500GB
Case:
LIAN LI PC-7HX Black Aluminum ATX Mid Tower
Bench-test
(notice that I missed 4 pins on the power connector? The board booted regardless…)
Installed
