BUILD Supermicro X9SRL-F Build Check

[Black Ninja]

Whether or not we might be friends has very little to do with what my mind associates with a handle of "Black Ninja." If I wanted to be nasty, I'd just tell you. :p

Fair enough, I'll leave it there. I am the same way

P.S. These handles(now I now what you mean by that) could be very misleading. Author can thing He is expressing one thing, but others can have totally different association in their mind about it. I am speaking from my experience: Many users that I judge initially by their avatar, I took as idiots in my mind, but proven wrong after getting to speak with them. I guess whatever they had in mind with their choice of avatar had different association in my mind with what they stand for.
You know what I mean.

 

[Black Ninja]

By the way I bought a LSI 9261-8i and will use 2x535 120GB to play with , to see how will work as datastore, similar to your hyper-visor which I am greeting more and more found of because of the WIO.

 

[jgreco]

Fair enough, I'll leave it there. I am the same way

P.S. These handles(now I now what you mean by that) could be very misleading. Author can thing He is expressing one thing, but others can have totally different association in their mind about it. I am speaking from my experience: Many users that I judge initially by their avatar, I took as idiots in my mind, but proven wrong after getting to speak with them. I guess whatever they had in mind with their choice of avatar had different association in my mind with what they stand for.
You know what I mean.

Sure. I can't ever meet @joeschmuck IRL because he'll totally ruin my mental image of him from The Muppet Show.

FWLIW, people who know me IRL and see my avatar here tend to say things like "how appropriate."

 

[jgreco]

By the way I bought a LSI 9261-8i and will use 2x535 120GB to play with , to see how will work as datastore, similar to your hyper-visor which I am greeting more and more found of because of the WIO.

The WIO is only a format choice and the generic half height stuff may be better if you don't want to get locked in.

But you'll probably really like the datastore speed of a RAID1 pair of SSD's on a 9261.

 

[Black Ninja]

Sure. I can't ever meet @joeschmuck IRL because he'll totally ruin my mental image of him from The Muppet Show.

FWLIW, people who know me IRL and see my avatar here tend to say things like "how appropriate."

How true it is.
I also thought about @joeschmuck's avatar and for someone you don't know IRL , it is really an ice breaker. Considering how cool these old guys were from the Muppet show.

 

[Black Ninja]

The WIO is only a format choice and the generic half height stuff may be better if you don't want to get locked in.

In 1u chassis to have 3 expansion cards , it's just to cool to resist.:D
But the is not just a format of choice. Is the only choice to get 3 cards in 1u chassis. I would be happy with even 2 card in regular MB in 1u chassis. Perhaps something like the regular 1u raiser (RSC-RR1U-E16) but with 2 cards on same level facing the opposite way (it should be possible), but there is no such a thing. Wait ? Did I just came up with a great idea for new 1u chassis super-micro never thought of ?

 

[Bidule0hm]

but with 2 cards on same level facing the opposite way (it should be possible)

How do you solder the connectors?

 

[jgreco]

But the is not just a format of choice. Is the only choice to get 3 cards in 1u chassis. I would be happy with even 2 card in regular MB in 1u chassis. Perhaps something like the regular 1u raiser (RSC-RR1U-E16) but with 2 cards on same level facing the opposite way (it should be possible), but there is no such a thing. Wait ? Did I just came up with a great idea for new 1u chassis super-micro never thought of ?:)

Naw, not even close. There've been chassis such as the AIC RMC1N2 that attempt this little trick, but positioning of the second card is difficult especially with arbitrary mainboard. We've sold these in the past, and they're a bit of a pain. You'll notice the PSU is entirely rejiggered, and you really can't see it but the second PCI slot actually uses a ribbon cable to interface into one of the host slots, which by default is too long so you need to rebuild a high density ribbon cable in order to make things "tight."

It turns out to be a question of which compromises are you willing to make, which I'd guess is what drove Supermicro in the direction of designing a platform to actually do this in a competent manner with WIO and UIO.

 

[jgreco]

How do you solder the connectors?

(Sheldon voice) Is this a trick question? Would the answer not be... "with solder?"

 

[rogerh]

How do you solder the connectors?

Get some special offset pin, rebated base, mirror pair connectors made.

 

[Bidule0hm]

(Sheldon voice) Is this a trick question? Would the answer not be... "with solder?"

Nop, just that with through-hole connectors with a fine pin pitch you can't really route signals to them let alone solder them if they are back to back.

 

[jgreco]

Nop, just that with through-hole connectors with a fine pin pitch you can't really route signals to them let alone solder them if they are back to back.

I invite you to open up some of our modern devices these days, where you can find things like an SSD with multiple PCB's inside layered on top of each other, or tablets/laptops with stacked boards. The cheap and easy solution is to use any of the various PCB interconnect products and have two boards.

Oh, look, it's even a riser for a 1U server, my favorite Intel ISP1100's, circa 1999, oh joy. Bet I've still got a stack of those in storage somewhere.

The slightly more sophisticated approach is to recognize that there's an offset involved when you flip one of the PCI cards around.

Yes, it'd be a difficult thing to build properly as a single board, but it is certainly doable since the sockets aren't actually aligned back to back. I think Intel chose the right strategy doing it as a PCB interconnect, but the point is that this is not only a totally doable thing, it's been done for many years.

 

[Bidule0hm]

Of course you can use multiple boards, I was talking about one board :)

 

[jgreco]

Of course you can use multiple boards, I was talking about one board :)

(again with the Sheldon voice) Then perhaps you should more carefully qualify your questions.

 

[Black Ninja]

Naw, not even close. There've been chassis such as the AIC RMC1N2 that attempt this little trick, but positioning of the second card is difficult especially with arbitrary mainboard. We've sold these in the past, and they're a bit of a pain. You'll notice the PSU is entirely rejiggered, and you really can't see it but the second PCI slot actually uses a ribbon cable to interface into one of the host slots, which by default is too long so you need to rebuild a high density ribbon cable in order to make things "tight."

It turns out to be a question of which compromises are you willing to make, which I'd guess is what drove Supermicro in the direction of designing a platform to actually do this in a competent manner with WIO and UIO.

This solution I definitely wouldn't like. I was just thinking a compromise: a regular 1u supermicro chassis and board with
one full size card on a left (which is already available with their riser) and another half size card on the opposite side. They will occupy the top space since there is MB underneath. Something like the WIO you have, but only with one full size and one half sitting on top of the MB.

P.S. I understand that the WIO allow to stack 2 cards on one side on top of each other, since there is no MB underneath, But wouldn't be possible to have 2 single cards in regular MB/Chassis if they occupy just the top positions of the chassis ? It's similar to the picture you show, but just keep everything the same the way it is in supermicro regular 1u.

 

[Black Ninja]

I invite you to open up some of our modern devices these days, where you can find things like an SSD with multiple PCB's inside layered on top of each other, or tablets/laptops with stacked boards. The cheap and easy solution is to use any of the various PCB interconnect products and have two boards.

Oh, look, it's even a riser for a 1U server, my favorite Intel ISP1100's, circa 1999, oh joy. Bet I've still got a stack of those in storage somewhere.

The slightly more sophisticated approach is to recognize that there's an offset involved when you flip one of the PCI cards around.

Yes, it'd be a difficult thing to build properly as a single board, but it is certainly doable since the sockets aren't actually aligned back to back. I think Intel chose the right strategy doing it as a PCB interconnect, but the point is that this is not only a totally doable thing, it's been done for many years.

This is the picture I was looking for but couldn't find
I meant this thing to be used as riser in regular 1u supermicro to be able to take 2 PCIe cards. Just the bottom side will be regular 3.0 16X male slot and will divide output in two 2.0 8X slots for 2 cards.

 

[Black Ninja]

By the way I knew about the proprietary WIO MB/chassis before but I've been trying to avoid them mostly because they are proprietary and have very limited places that could be work. Unlike something like some board like X9SRL-F , that could be ESXI host, freenas with a lot of memory, or anything you want it to be, including putting in desktop/tower case,
BUT
After @jgreco show me his hypervisor and mention the possibilities of having raid card,10Gb nic , and still have one more slot to use all that in 1U chassis I start rethinking the WIO possibilities. It's just too cool for 1u chassis to resist. In 2u or 3u don't shine that much, because in 2u you can get most things in low profile , in 3u you have standard size so easy to fill all PCIe slots you have.

I'll study more about WIO what risers it take and if it's part of MB or chassis and stuff like that, but in general what is the most important things I should be aware by going with WIO board and chassis.(1U) ?

 

[Black Ninja]

How do you solder the connectors?

You don't always have to do that yourself Bidule0hm
I know you probably can , but I was talking about to buy one already made and soldered.:D

 

[Black Ninja]

I meant this thing to be used as riser in regular 1u supermicro to be able to take 2 PCIe cards. Just the bottom side will be regular 3.0 16X male slot and will divide output in two 2.0 8X slots for 2 cards.

I don't want to look crazy by replying to myself but I have an answer to that: It is absolutley possible to be done the way you describe it, but for that reason the space under the small (half length card) on the right has to be clear from sticking too high components like the memory for example in X9SRL-F. So taking that in consideration and looking the existing regular non-WIO boards it won't work. But if the board is designed with the intention to have the space cleared for eventual card on top of it, but not altered in any other way so it could be used in standart chassis as well, then the answer is YES - You can have a standard MB with option for 2 expansion cards with a riser in 1U chassis.

Supermicro have to design it , and Bidule0hm can solder it.
Till then we are back to WIO for 1U if we want the goodies that comes with it.

 

[jgreco]

This solution I definitely wouldn't like. I was just thinking a compromise: a regular 1u supermicro chassis and board with
one full size card on a left (which is already available with their riser) and another half size card on the opposite side. They will occupy the top space since there is MB underneath. Something like the WIO you have, but only with one full size and one half sitting on top of the MB.

Right. There's nothing stopping you from doing that other than it being a little harder to find a chassis that supports this these days. Turns out it isn't all that practical because what you really want is for two slots to have their electrical signals present in one location. You could theoretically do this with an x16 slot if you find a board with a sweet bifurcation implementation. Or you could ribbon cable over to the next slot. But what typically happens is you actually need a board that's specifically designed for it, so when you look at something like an HP DL365, it'll have a special magic riser card assembly:

that does what you're looking for by plugging into a special socket in the mainboard. In the HP implementation, this floats above the existing system board, because they use the back half of the board for things like iLO, network controllers, and other low-rise stuff that leaves plenty of space for expansion cards. Supermicro takes this one step more with the WIO format, where they force the entire board into a half-wide format, allowing two full length full height slots.

P.S. I understand that the WIO allow to stack 2 cards on one side on top of each other, since there is no MB underneath, But wouldn't be possible to have 2 single cards in regular MB/Chassis if they occupy just the top positions of the chassis ? It's similar to the picture you show, but just keep everything the same the way it is in supermicro regular 1u.

Yeah, that's what HP, IBM, Dell and others do. I'm more familiar with the HP gear since we own a bunch of it.