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homeserver setup - questions rgd. X9SCL+-F and transcoding / processor

C

cherub_i

n00b
Joined
Oct 15, 2011
Messages
8
Hi everyone,

I plan to upgrade from a desktop-type hardware based homeserver running XEN with OpenSolaris dom0 and one Linux and one Windows domU to a VMWare ESXi based system with server grade components. As I have no experience with server grade hardware yet, I have quite a few questions and it would be great if you could help me with some advice.
The system needs to serve as a NAS for documents, digital fotography and media files (music, videos) and needs to run a Windows VM because I need iTunes to run 24/7 plus some kind of transcoding-enabled UPNP server (momentarily using PS3MediaServerm, but my current server is not fast enough for transcoding) to serve movies to PS3 and iPad.

Planned setup


My questions

1. As far as I see, the X9SCL+-F has "Two Intel® 82574L Gigabit Ethernet Controllers" while the X9SCL-F has "Intel® 82579LM and 82574L, 2x Gigabit LAN ports". So both have 2 gigabit network interfaces, but different controllers - what does this difference mean for me in real life with my planned setup?

2. Am I correct, that I will not need a E-12x5 cpu with integrated graphics or additional graphics card, as the mainboards "Nuvoton WPCM450RA0BX" will be able to handle terminal and Windows desktop?

3. Is there any way to look up or find out whether the Xeon E3-1230 will be capable of doing on-the-fly transcoding of HD (1080p / 720p) material? Do you have any experiences with this?

4. I want to allow direct access to the onboard SATA for the NAS-VM. Will this be possible with VMWare for the onboard SATA? (I might add a separate controller later on when I expand my storage to more disks but would like to keep costs down right now and therefore go with what I have onboard for the beginning.)

5. The mainboard features an internal type A USB port. I want to run my OS (ESXi + the VM running the NAS) off an USB stick. Is there anything I need to pay attention to when getting a stick for this? Obviously I would go for some well-known-brand and not use any of the trade-fair giveaways, but is there anything else? Is there a speed rating like there is for SD-cards?


I believe this is it for the moment - there might be more questions coming up when I start building the thing.
I am thankful for any answers or hints and tipps you have for me.

Best regards,
-bastian
 
The esxi datastore cannot be on a usb stick. You can install esxi on it and boot from it, but need a separate device. esxi loads everything into ram so don't worry about the stick. I shouldn't think you'd need the graphics cpu - i would access windows via remote desktop rather than the 'console'.
 
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The 82579LM nic is not currently supported by esxi. 4.1 has a driver provided by chilly, but 5.0 has none yet so if you need more than one nic you'd need to plug in a pci-e nic. i'd go for the '+' part for that reason.
 
@cherub_i: I use two X9SCM-F (similar to the X9SCL-F you are looking at) in my servers. I can't answer your linux based questions since I don't use linux, however I can tell you that Windows installation (including WHS2011 and Server 2008R2) does not include a driver for the Intel 82579LM Gigabit controller, however the driver installation for this controller is simple, painless and only takes a few seconds after you completed the Windows installation.

As to on-board Nuvoton VGA graphics, it's a plain VGA controller (actually its a Matrox G200e) and at higher resolutions it's a bit on the slow side. I would NOT recommend using it for anything other than basic setup tasks! As danswartz noted above, you are better of connecting via remote desktop to the server, that's what I do and it works like a charm!

You do not need the Intel Xeon E-12x5 series cpu. That would be a waste as the chipset on these motherboards do not support the graphics portion of the CPU! I use Xeon E3-1240 in my servers. I have plans to use them for transcoding of 1080p material but have not had the time to set this up.
 
Hi danswartz and treadstone,
thanks for your input!

Hi Everyone,

so:
1. X9SCL+-F or X9SCL-F? >> solved. I'll go with the "+" option.
2. Do I need a E-12x5 cpu with integrated graphics? >> solved. If I don't.


3. Is there any way to look up or find out whether the Xeon E3-1230 will be capable of doing on-the-fly transcoding of HD (1080p / 720p) material? Do you have any experiences with this?
>> Does anybody have more information on this?


4. I want to allow direct access to the onboard SATA for the NAS-VM. Will this be possible with VMWare for the onboard SATA? (I might add a separate controller later on when I expand my storage to more disks but would like to keep costs down right now and therefore go with what I have onboard for the beginning.)
5. The mainboard features an internal type A USB port. I want to run my OS (ESXi + the VM running the NAS) off an USB stick. Is there anything I need to pay attention to when getting a stick for this? Obviously I would go for some well-known-brand and not use any of the trade-fair giveaways, but is there anything else? Is there a speed rating like there is for SD-cards?
>> Hmm, I still dont't quite get what hardware I have use here.

I want to:
a.) Give direct access to a set of disks - i.e. one controller to the NAS-VM for performance reasons.
b.) Have a boot device for ESXi.
c.) Have somewhere to store the OS for the NAS-VM (further VMs can then in turn reside on the NAS-VMs storage).
d.) Keep my initial cost down but be able to extend later on.

So for a.) I intended to pass on my onboard SATA controller to the NAS-VM.
b.) can be ("any" - as I learned, thanks) USB drive
But what about c.)? (Thats's called a local datastore - right?)
And it cannot be on the USB from b.) - ok.
Can it come from one of the disks that is connected to a.) ? Probably not, as ESXi has given all controll to the SATA controller away, right?

So what other options do I have?
- Get a cheap PCIe SATA controller with one disk to use for b.) and c.)?
- Get a proper (say INTEL SASUC8I) controller for a.) and let ESXi keep the onboard SATA?
- ?

What would you recommend?

Cheers,
-bastian
 
4. you can pass the onboard sata controller thru, but then you won't have a port to use for the local datastore - it can't be on the controller passed in. need a cheap hba or somesuch.
5. just a vanilla usb stick of 4gb or so to be safe.
 
Bastian,

I have a similar setup...X9SCM-F, E3-1230, 16GB Kingston ECC, 2 x M1015 (w/IT fw) passthrough to openindiana vm,

You should leave the onboard SATA controllers for local datastores (don't bother with onboard soft raid as ESXi won't detect it).

If I were you, buy a M1015 from ebay for $75-$100 (got mine for $75 shipped) and flash with an IT firmware. Can't go wrong with that price.
 
Thanks for the quick replies - that clarifies it for me, so I need to budget an additional SATA controller.

@JinNjuicE: when you say don't bother with onboard soft RAID, does that mean I cannot set up a RAID at all using the onboard controller, or is there a way to set up a mirrored "hard" RAID - one that would look like a single disk to ESXi and would improve the systems fault-tolerance?
I do have two equally sized HDs sitting in a drawer somewhere which I could put to good use as a mirror for the local datastore.
 
bastian, you are correct. If you want to setup a mirror for your local datastore, I would buy a cheap raid1 card that is supported by vmware. Perhaps, get one more M1015 and update with the latest non-IT firmware. I would put that card in a PCI-e 4x slot.
 
bastian, I was browsing around this forum and found a different solution offered by emc.

ICY DOCK MB982SPR-2S ($60.80 after MIR from newegg)

If you already have 2 identical 2.5" drives as I do, it might be a good solution for you.
 
Thanks - I see. In that case I'll rather start with a single disk setup for the local datastore. The disks I have are 3,5" and I don't want to invest into another SATA controller just now.
I'll look into ordering the stuff I need and I'll report back on whether I got everything to work.
 
Oh - another question just came up - should be really easy to answer for anyone who's ever installed a Xeon CPU (I haven't):
Do the "boxed" Xeon CPUs (e.g. E3-1240) get shipped with everything you need for cooling them (i.e. processor cooler + fan)?
If not - what cooler and fan (nothing fancy) would you recommend?
 
Ok. Just ordered my things and I really feel excited now! Have to wait though till next week for delivery.

Another question: I ordered a (new) IBM M1015. I want do use OpenIndiana (latest stable build) as the NAS-OS and want to pass through the M1015 to that VM for direct access (will be using ZFS with an existing pool on 4 HDs).

Do I have to reflash the M1015 to IT FW?
Is the howto here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.15 still the way to go?
 
Yeah, that's still the way to go. When you download the flash tools via mediafire.com, I would just replace the "2108it.bin" with the latest IT firmware. Also, I wasn't able to flash my M1015s from my supermicro board, I had to put the cards in my HTPC to flash them.

It's super simple, it literally takes less than 5 mins. Make sure to write the serial number (?) which looks like "500605bxxxxxxxxx".

Good luck!
 
You're not going to transcode 1080p content on the fly with one CPU unless it is a very low bitrate, and not very visually transparent. 1366 is still taken very seriously in the enterprise world, and will stomp any 1155 platform. You will most likely need two 6-core Xeons to meet a real-time or greater goal and still care about quality. You might get away with dual 4-cores. Also, having everything virtualized is really going to slow you down, so video encoding will take a major hit.

I'd recommend keeping a system solely for video encoding, running some form of Windows, and if your video source is h.264, VC-1, or MPEG2, get an nVidia card with CUDA to offload decoding to a GPU to get the most out of the CPU(s).
 
:eek: HELP! :eek:
I got my stuff two days ago and tried flashing the M1015 and I am stuck :-(((

1. megarec -readsbr 0 backup.sbr >> OK, no errors
2. megarec -writesbr 0 empty.bin >> OK, no errors
3. megarec -cleanflash 0
>> starts erasing, then stops at 70%:
Code: 
 Completed: 70% Flash Erase Error

Flash Chip Erasing Error

Error in downloading image.
Error code = 64
Failed to flash the image. Please retry recovery.

4. Power cycle your system (yes, no boot-time bios screen appear, this is normal)
>> I did this in spite of the error and at boot I get something that looks promising to me:
Code: 
RAID Adapter
Firmware Failed Validation!!!
Adapter needs to be reflashed.
Press Any Key to Continue

5. sas2flsh -o -f 2108it.bin -b mptsas2.rom
Now this doesn't work at all :-(. I tried with the P11 version from the LSI site (latest FW) and also with the FW included in the origional archive.
Btw: when using the latest FW, I only need to take the updated FW-file, not also the Bootrom-file, right?
Code: 
...
Advaced Mode Set
Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2008(B2)
Executing Operation: Flash Firmware Image
  Firmware Image has a Valid Checksum.
  Firmware Image compatible with Controller.
  Valid NVDATA Image found.
  NVDATA Device ID and Chip Revision match verified.
  Valid Initialization Image verified.
  Valid BootLoader Image verified.
  Chip is in RESET state. Attempting Host Boot...
takes about a minute here, then goes on:
Code: 
  ERROR: Firmware Host Boot Failed !
Due to errir remaining commands will not be executed.
Unable to Process Commands.
Exiting SAS2Flash


I didn't try to flash back to the original firmware, as this is not the direction I want to take. Also I don't know whether I want to find out just now that I might have bricked a brandnew controller :-(

I really hope someone can help me out here, I am also posting this over at the lime-technology forum becaus I am anxious to find out what to do as soon as possible.
 
Solved!
I tried flashing againg from a different motherboard and that worked!

I still find it weird that on the first motherboard it went up to the 70% and did not fail entirely...
 
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