i7 Server boards

timmorris

timmorris

timmorris

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16 Jan 2006
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I'm looking at migrating my Small Business Server 2003 to SBS 2008. I'm going to upgrade to three rack mounted boxes - the main SBS box, a second server to run backup, centrally managed AV, and exchange archiving, and a third (likely running Windows 7) as a media server.

Quad core CPUs will be fine, so no need for dual processor boards, and there's no need for high performance graphics.

Recommendations please.

Tim
 
oh yes - they should be fine, win7 on release will have all relavent drivers [according to ms]

so any X58 will do the job

tbh the ws board might be overkill

i would go for the p6t deluxe or UD5

perhaps consider a W3520 bloomfield Xeon chip too :)

its just like a 920
 
The main reason I want identical configs is I'll build 4 machines - use icybox caddies for the 4 drives on a Raid 10 config so if I have a failure I can swap the spare m/c in. Far faster than waiting for an engineer to arrive and cheaper.

I'll use an MS based 1U raid NAS, again on Raid 10, and use a 1.6Tb tape drive for bare metal restore.

Tim
 
Do any of the boards have built in VGA?

I'm going to be putting in a 1U server VGA and keyboard with built in switch. The switches tend to use VGA rather than DVI though.

Tim
 
timmorris said:
Do any of the boards have built in VGA?

I'm going to be putting in a 1U server VGA and keyboard with built in switch. The switches tend to use VGA rather than DVI though.

Tim
Click to expand...

None of the i7 boards that I know of have built in graphics. Best bet would be to buy a cheapo pci-e video card.
 
Look at the Supermicro X8STE. I have 3 that I use for my ESX Servers, board will take i7, Xeon 3500 or 5500 series CPU. Rock Solid board, can't praise them enough. I have mine fitted with L5520 which is the low power version and 12Gb of Crucial ECC-DDR3 RAM.

Built in VGA port , 3 x x8 PCI-E slots and 1 x4, Dual Intel Gigabit built in NIC, 24Gb DDR3 support. 6 RAM Slots available depending upon how much ram you want to put in.

Sounds ideal for what you want.

If you want built in SAS as well then get the X8ST3-F, which comes with a LSI 1068E 8 port SAS controller, and an Integrated IPMI 2.0 board with dedicated LAN.

Has Drivers for Win2K8, Win2K3 available, Vista Drivers avaiable as well.

X8STE-O can be found for 200 - 220 mark
X8ST3-F for about 280 to 300 mark

Also if putting in a 1U case the RAM slots are with the airflow from front to back alongside the CPU rather then across the airflow acting as a brake in front of the CPU.
 
Thanks, that's perfect. I've used Supermicro boards before, and they tend to be aimed at the server/workstation market. I'm using a 1U MS based NAS (so I can put the Exchange DB on it). A 1U switch, and a 1U VDU and KB switch. The severs are in 4U cases as I want to put program files and MSSQL databases for the utility apps on Raid 10 storage in icy-boxes.

Tim
 
rjkoneill said:
oh yes - they should be fine, win7 on release will have all relavent drivers [according to ms]

so any X58 will do the job

tbh the ws board might be overkill

i would go for the p6t deluxe or UD5

perhaps consider a W3520 bloomfield Xeon chip too :)

its just like a 920
Click to expand...

Rich, Can you recommend any Eshop that sells this? Seems none is available in OcUk. Thanks.
 
mdjmcnally said:
Look at the Supermicro X8STE. I have 3 that I use for my ESX Servers, board will take i7, Xeon 3500 or 5500 series CPU. Rock Solid board, can't praise them enough. I have mine fitted with L5520 which is the low power version and 12Gb of Crucial ECC-DDR3 RAM.

Built in VGA port , 3 x x8 PCI-E slots and 1 x4, Dual Intel Gigabit built in NIC, 24Gb DDR3 support. 6 RAM Slots available depending upon how much ram you want to put in.

Sounds ideal for what you want.

If you want built in SAS as well then get the X8ST3-F, which comes with a LSI 1068E 8 port SAS controller, and an Integrated IPMI 2.0 board with dedicated LAN.

Has Drivers for Win2K8, Win2K3 available, Vista Drivers avaiable as well.

X8STE-O can be found for 200 - 220 mark
X8ST3-F for about 280 to 300 mark

Also if putting in a 1U case the RAM slots are with the airflow from front to back alongside the CPU rather then across the airflow acting as a brake in front of the CPU.
Click to expand...

Revisiting this now, as my nephew is back from Uni next week. As well as being a decent chippie, he's the most computer literate in the house so will help with connecting clients to the new domain (I'm a cripple and live next door to my brother's family).

I'm looking for a decent 18U cabinet with casters that will take the weight. I know it us against the rules to post vendors but can someone recommend a decent brand of cheap cabinets? I need something that will take 26" sliding rails as I'm using 4U Compucase S411 cases, and want to be able to pull cases out to change components.

Thinking about putting in dual CPU boards and leaving one slot empty for the time being. Thoughts?

SAS?

Tim
 
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I've had a third look, and a P6T with an Asus GeForce 6200 LE looks like it will do the job. I can't find them on the Asus site, can someone comfirm that Windows 2008 x64 drivers are available for the P6T board? Is it simply a case of downloading the RAID chipset drivers from the Intel site (for use with F6 when installing), or is more required?

Tim
 
I can't find them on the Asus site, can someone comfirm that Windows 2008 x64 drivers are available for the P6T board?
Click to expand...

Yes it should work fine, although there is no F6 anymore it is all gui. You would typically use the Vista x64 driver for server 2008 and the Windows 7 x64 driver for server 2008 R2 (you may find its the same driver as a lot of vista/7 drivers are).
 
Thanks,

I've used the GUI with a USB stick on Vista - but only once so I'd forgotten! I've found the Raid driver on the Intel website - I should imagine the rest of them will be on Windows Update by now. I'll be installing 4x500Gb drives in a Raid 10 array in IcyBox hot-swap drive bays. Is there a Raid management tool available from Intel?

I've found a decent 18U cabinet, 1U Monitor with KVM switch and 2U UPS. I'm not sure what rating to go for - I think 2KVA might be overkill.

Total system load will be 3 each of:

Core i7 920
6Gb RAM
4x 500Gb drives
Asus GeForce 6200 LE
Asus P6T mainboard

The main unit will have a 1.6Tb Ultrium tape drive and Adaptec 32bit PCI SCSI card.

Suggestions for PSUs please? I'll hook one up to a power monitoring plug available from a well known high street electronics shop and see how much current it draws before finally speccing the UPS but opinions are welcome.

Tim
 
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would it not be worth investing in a decent teir 1 server and using ESX to virtualise the servers you need? how many users do you have? i think you would be wasting resources using comodity hardware in a server enviroment and also a lot of the stuff is not designed for 24x7 use. You can pick up some good second hand stuff on online auctions and i always like the HP DL380 servers.

Regards Sam
 
I know where you are coming from, but you do get a massive bang for your buck when using workstation components to build a server. I currently use an Athlon XP+ 3200 with 2Gig and software Raid. I've had to replace the mainboard once since 2002 and a hard disk, and have kept spares on hand. The components come in at £2,200 for three identical servers. If I bought a single ESX machine I'd not have the robutness of three servers with a hot swap spare. What I'm doing isn't best practices but it suits me and it means I can get the server back up and running in no time at all if it fails.

I'm using overclockable components that are lightly stressed, with quiet and incredibly efficient heatsink fans, with the hard drives stored in Icyboxes, which as well as keeping the drives cool have LEDs which show if the drives are in need of replacement. Using Raid 1+0 means 2 drives can fail in an array without data loss.

The cabinet has a mesh front and back to encourage airflow.

I appreciate the comments, but I'm happy to keep moving in the same direction.

The Exchange@PAM archiving solution I'm using allows me to store a copy of the entire database plus users' shared folders to an online server in realtime, restoreable to any server anywhere in the world in addition to the tape backups that allow me to restore automatically to a bare metal box.

I've specced a 700W PSU - is that too much?

I'm going to put a 2U rack mount PSU in there, either 1500VA or 2000 depending on how much current a single server draws, and I don't want to overspec the PSU and draw too much current unnecessarily. A rule of thumb is to spec the UPS based so that the server's current draw is no more than 2/3rds of the total capacity of the UPS.

I've only got 10 client PCs, and 8 users (3 remote that just use Exchange via RPC over HTTPS), but there is a baseline that needs to be met with no clients. The current server was fine when I first installed SBS 2003, but now I'm on R2 with WSUS it is struggling to keep up. The media server will benefit from the Quad core CPU when transcoding music and video, the SBS box will use it throughout the day as will the utility server as Trend Micro offloads the scanning process from the clients to the server.

I would certainly benefit from Virtualisation - the CPUs and mainboards' chipset support it, I'm just not ready for the extra level of complexity yet. I may look at it in the future but I'm not ready for it yet. I've spoken to an incredibly helpful guy today who has put together a cabinet for me.

Tim
 
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