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Motherboard Selection Advice

N

Nathan546

n00b
Joined
Oct 29, 2007
Messages
6
I'm currently planning a new home lab build. It will consist of:

NAS running unRAID
Router/firewall running pfSense
Light gaming under Win 7
Perhaps some other stuff

So, ideally I'm looking for a motherboard with two separate storage chips such that I can set one as a passthrough for unRAID and use the other for the ESXi data stores.

This motherboard also needs to have 3 NICS (maybe two? I'm thinking 2 for pfSense and 1 for the other VMs -- could I get away with two?) as passthroughs as well as a video card passthrough. I'm also looking to use ECC memory and some form of IOMMU.

I was thinking something like an Asus P9D-WS with an E3-1200 V3, however I'm not opposed to AMD or server motherboard solution. Adding additional SATA controllers / NICs through PCI(E) is also acceptable.

Does anyone know of a board that ESXi supports for all of these drivers and technologies?
 
I'm using a Supermicro X10SL7-F, which should do everything I think you're looking for. You can use two NICs, one as WAN/input to pfSense, and then an internal switch so that any VMs would be on the output/LAN side of pfSense. Or, you could use the board's second NIC for the other VMs. But, you'd have plenty of board slots for extra NICs if you need it (I did).

I currently have a GPU on this board passed through to a VM, but haven't ever done anything with it. Should work just fine though if I wanted to set up a gaming VM to use with it.
 
The number of SATA controllers on that board is great. Unfortunately, I'm concerned there's not enough expansion slots and no true x16 PCI-e. If I have to install a sound card (no on-board on this board) and video card, both expansion slots will be consumed. I'd at least like to have a few extra expansion slots to be safe.
 
Maybe a workstation board for the PCIe x16 slot then:
SuperMicro X10SAT

Add your own controller.

EDIT: either ASUS or SM workstation boards end up sharing x16 when you add other PCIe devices from what I see in specs
 
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