Intel Xeon D-1518 (X10SDV-4C-7TP4F) ESXi & Storage server build notes

These are my build notes of my last server. This server is based around the Supermicro X10SDV-4C-7TP4F motherboard that I already described in my previous article (Bill-of-Materials). For the Case I select a Fractal Design Node 804 square small chassis. It is described as being able to handle upto 10x 3.5″ disks.

Fractal Design Node 804

Here is the side view where the motherboard can be fitted. It supports MiniITX, MicroITX and the FlexATX of the Supermicro motherboard. Two 3.5″ harddrives or 2.5″ SSD can be fitted on the bottom plate.

x10sdv_node804--2

The right section of the chassis, contains the space for eight 3.5″ harddrives, fixed in two sliding frame at the top.

x10sdv_node804--3

Let’s compare the size of the Chassis, the Power Supply Unit and the Motherboard in the next photo.

Fractal Design Node 804, Supermicro X10SDV-4C-7TP4F and Corsair RM750i

Fractal Design Node 804, Supermicro X10SDV-4C-7TP4F and Corsair RM750i

When you zoom in the the picture above, you can see three red squares on the bottom right of the motherboard. Before you inser the motherboard in the chassis, you might want to make sure you have moved the mSATA pin from the position on the photo to the 2nd position, otherwise you will not be able to attach the mSATA to the chassis. You need to unscrew the holding grommet from below the motherboard. People having purchased the Supermicro E300-8D will have a nasty surprise. The red square in the center of the motherboard is set for M.2 sticks at the 2280 position. If you have a M.2 storage stick 22110, you better move the holding grommet also.

Here is another closer view of the Supermicro X10SDV-4C-7TP4F motherboard with the two Intel X552 SFP+ connectors, and the 16 SAS2 ports managed by the onboard LSI 2116 SAS Chipset.

X10SDV-4C-7TP4F

In the next picture you see the mSATA holding grommet moved to accommodate the Samsung 850 EVO Basic 1TB mSATA SSD, and the Samsung SM951 512GB NVMe SSD in the M.2 socket.

X10SDV-4C-7TP4F

In the next picture we see the size of the motherboard in the Chassis.At the top left, you will see a feature of the Fractal Design Node 804. A switch that allows you to change the voltage of three fans. This switch is getting it’s electricity thru a SATA power connector. It’s on this power switch, that I was able to put a Y-power cable and then drive the Noctua A6x25 PWM CPU fan that fits perfectly on top of the CPU heatsink. This allowed me to bring down the CPU heat buildup during the Memtest86+ test from 104c to 54c.

X10SDV in Node 804

I used two spare Noctua Fan on CPU Heatsink fixer to hold the Noctua A6x25 PWM on the Heatsink, and a ziplock to hold those two fixers together (sorry I’m not sure if we have a proper name for those metal fixing brackets). Because the Noctua is getting it’s electricity from the Chassis and not the Motherboard, the Supermicro BIOS is not attemping to increase/decrease the Fan’s rpm. This allows me to keep a steady air flow on the heatsink.

Noctua A6x25 PWM fixed on heatsink

Noctua A6x25 PWM fixed on heatsink

I have fitted my server with a single 4TB SAS drive. To do this I use a LSI SAS Cable L5-00222-00 shown here.

lsi_sas_l5-00222-00_cable

This picture shows the 4TB SAS drive in the left most storage frame. Due to the length of the adapter, the SAS cable would be blocked by the Power Supply Unit. I will only be able to expand to 4x 3.5″ SAS disk in this chassis. Using SATA drives, the chassis would take upto 10 disks.

Node 804 Storage and PSU side

View from the back once all is assembled and powered up.

x10sdv_node804--12

This server with an Intel Xeon D-1518 and 128GB is part of my Secondary Site chassis.

ESXi60P03

The last picture shows my HomeDC Secondary Site. The Fractal Design Node 804 is sitting next to a Fractal Design Define R5. The power consumption is rated at 68 Watts for a X10SDV-4C-7TP4F with two 10GbE SFP+ Passive Copper connection, two SSDs and a single 4TB SAS drive.

HomeDC Secondary Site

HomeDC Secondary Site

Supermicro X10SDV-4C-7TP4F server Bill-of-Materials

Another new host has joined the Home Datacenter (#HomeDC). This one is my first low powered Intel Xeon D-1500 server I get my hands on. There have been some great install guides about other Supermicro X10SDV motherboards on many sites, and I would recommend that you head over to Paul Braren’s (@tinkertry) TinkerTry site for a lot of great content. There are now also two small server from Supermicro that came out E200-8D and E300-8D. The motherboard I selected for my new host closely matches the one on the Supermicro E300-8D, described on TinkerTry.

I was looking for a motherboard that had great storage capabilities, 10G connectivity and low powered. As my Home Datacenter (#HomeDC) is growing, I find myself using more and more 10G SFP+ connectivity. This 10G SFP+ connectivity consumes less watts in the chipset, creating less heat inside the servers. SFP+ connecitivty allows me to use cheaper network switches. 10G Ethernet with RJ45 has a price premium, even if the Category 6A cables are cheaper than Passive Copper SFP+ cables.

I selected the Supermicro X10SDV-4C-7TP4F motherboard, it has a 7 year product life, support two SFP+ 10G connection, comes with a LSI/AVAGO 2116 SAS/SATA chipset with a total of 16 SAS ports. More than enough for a storage server. It comes with a M.2 socket and a mSATA socket. The Intel Xeon D-1518 is a quad cores processor running at 2.2Ghz. All in all a very good selection of specifications on such a small FlexATX motherboard.

X10SDV-7TP4F_spec

The X10SDV series of motherboards come with the Intel X552 dual 10G network card. In case you are experiencing network connectivity issues, it is important to make sure your motherboard has the proper firmware. When I received my motherboard with the default bios 1.0, it gave me a serious scare. I was unable to get the two 10G links up with my Cisco SG500X and SG500XG switches. I had to upgrade to version 1.0a and clear the CMOS to get it to work.

I’ve been a long time user of the Fractal Design cases, and I wanted to have something small for the FlexATX, yet with lots of space for adding disks. So I selected the Fractal Design Node 804 cube chassis that supports MicroATX, MiniATX and the FlexATX like the Supermicro X10SDV series. The Node 804 is capable of having upto 10x 3.5″ disks. The case comes with three fans and a fan selector that is powered by a SATA power connector, so fans can run independant of the motherboard connectors. This is very usefull when you add a small Noctua NF-A6x25 PWM fan on top of the CPU heat sink. It is not spinning-up and down at the whim of the Supermicro motherboard choosing. I also liked the square look of the chassis.

fd-ca-node-804

For my power supply, I have decided to change from my usual Enermax for a Corsair RM750i power supply. I wanted a power supply that was capable of driving a lot of disks if I decided to increase the amount of disks, and a power supply that would be quiet under low power consumption. As you see below plenty of expansions and a power supply that stays fan-less until it it’s 45% of it’s charge. I added a Seagate Enterprise Capacity 4TB SAS drive in the chassis and when it’s running vSphere with some quiet VMs, the system is only consuming 69 Watts.

RMi_750_04RM750i_NOISE_WEB_121714

The Supermicro X10SDV-4C-7TP4F comes with the following expansions for storage.

PCI-Express
  • 2 PCI-E 3.0 x8 slots
M.2
  • Interface: PCI-E 3.0 x4
  • Form Factor: M Key 2242/2280/22110
  • Support SATA devices
Mini PCI-E
  • Interface: PCI-E 2.0 x1
  • Support mSATA

In the M.2 socket, I added a Samsung SM951 512GB NVMe Solid State Disk and in the Mini PCI-E, I added the Samsung 850 EVO 1TB Basic Solid State Disk. The mSATA drive is used as the Boot device and to have a large datastore to keep VMs local to the host. The Samsung SM951 512GB NVMe SSD can be used for the caching part of a VSAN design or a rfcache when running scaleIO.

Another up front warning, before you place this motherboard in a chassis, you need to make sure to un-screw the mSATA holder stick to the right position, so you can use a standard mSATA. There is a tiny screw on top and bottom of the mSATA holding bolt.

The Supermicro X10SDV-4C-7TP4F CPU cooling is done with a passive CPU heat sink. But during the initial memory testing, I have found that the IPMI CPU Sensor was showing Critical heat warning during a memtest86+ run. I decided to add the Noctua A6X25 PWM fan on top of Xeon D-1518 processor. The fit is perfect, and when this fan is connected on the chassis fan subsystem (see the top right section in the photo at the bottom) the critical heat issues disappeared.

So let’s recap the Bill-of-Materials (BoM) for this server the way I have configured. The pricing has been assembled from amazon/newegg in the US, amazon/azerty.nl for the Euro and with Brack.ch for Switzerland. I have left out the cost of the HDD, as Your Mileage May Vary.

X10SDV Cost

I will create a 2nd post on the build notes and pictures, but here is a teaser.

Node804_X10SDV