Hi,
Im looking to upgrade from my trusty HP ML115G5 to a beefier box for my home ESXi server and have found the Asus KCMA-D8 motherboard.
This really fits my needs as ive been looking for a mobo that has some scalability when I need it, so that I wont need to swap it for a long time. The fact that the ML115 cant take more than 8gb is really the only thing thats made me look at upgrading the hardware, so with the Asus board supporting dual opteron 4100 series CPUs and up to 128GB ECC memory I think that should be plenty of headroom for a few years
Out of the box, this board, on paper, should have great compatibility - the dual onboard intel nics, and the onboard sata are on the vmware hcl, although the raid is software-based it doesnt matter as I will be using a Dell PERC 5i. The chipset also supports AMD-V IOMMU for VMDirectPath I/O and vitally the Asus bios has the toption to enable it so all good so far.
The only thing from stopping me pulling the trigger is that I cannot find any mention anywhere (bar a single amazon user review) of how well this board works with ESXi in practice, hence my post here. Im hoping someone may have experience with this board and might be able to provide some input.
Also, I would greatly appreciate any feedback regarding how exactly the dual cpu sockets work. For exmaple, can I use two different speed/core opteron cpus from the same 4100 range, or must both sockets have the exact same cpu in order to function correctly?
Also, as I will only be installing a single cpu (hexa-core) for now, would this be able to access any ram installed across all eight onboard DIMM slots? The manual does not provide any of these answers (maybe its obvious and im lacking the fundamental knowledge of such things) although it does appear to hint that the ram slots are segrated into two sets of four dimms, one set for each cpu. Perhaps a limitation of the number of physical dimm sockets the integrated memory controller on the cpu can access?
Im also waiting for the new AMD bulldozers to appear in the hope that this might cause a price drop on the current generation of cpus (cant be long now!). Im also torn between going with ECC memory for greater scalability, or just going the cheapo route with non-ECC (16GB DDR-3 online for £99?!) as the board will only take up to a max of 32gb with non-ECC...
Anyways, any input anyone could provide with this board for ESXi, or in general, would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks in advance,
BAM.
Im looking to upgrade from my trusty HP ML115G5 to a beefier box for my home ESXi server and have found the Asus KCMA-D8 motherboard.
This really fits my needs as ive been looking for a mobo that has some scalability when I need it, so that I wont need to swap it for a long time. The fact that the ML115 cant take more than 8gb is really the only thing thats made me look at upgrading the hardware, so with the Asus board supporting dual opteron 4100 series CPUs and up to 128GB ECC memory I think that should be plenty of headroom for a few years
Out of the box, this board, on paper, should have great compatibility - the dual onboard intel nics, and the onboard sata are on the vmware hcl, although the raid is software-based it doesnt matter as I will be using a Dell PERC 5i. The chipset also supports AMD-V IOMMU for VMDirectPath I/O and vitally the Asus bios has the toption to enable it so all good so far.
The only thing from stopping me pulling the trigger is that I cannot find any mention anywhere (bar a single amazon user review) of how well this board works with ESXi in practice, hence my post here. Im hoping someone may have experience with this board and might be able to provide some input.
Also, I would greatly appreciate any feedback regarding how exactly the dual cpu sockets work. For exmaple, can I use two different speed/core opteron cpus from the same 4100 range, or must both sockets have the exact same cpu in order to function correctly?
Also, as I will only be installing a single cpu (hexa-core) for now, would this be able to access any ram installed across all eight onboard DIMM slots? The manual does not provide any of these answers (maybe its obvious and im lacking the fundamental knowledge of such things) although it does appear to hint that the ram slots are segrated into two sets of four dimms, one set for each cpu. Perhaps a limitation of the number of physical dimm sockets the integrated memory controller on the cpu can access?
Im also waiting for the new AMD bulldozers to appear in the hope that this might cause a price drop on the current generation of cpus (cant be long now!). Im also torn between going with ECC memory for greater scalability, or just going the cheapo route with non-ECC (16GB DDR-3 online for £99?!) as the board will only take up to a max of 32gb with non-ECC...
Anyways, any input anyone could provide with this board for ESXi, or in general, would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks in advance,
BAM.
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