It's that time of year, when many an IT pro or PC enthusiast huddles up in their home labs and prepare for the long winter ahead by refreshing their home lab configuration. Especially if they're scheduled for time off from work. Or trying to get certified. Mini-tower SuperServer Bundle 2 or Bundle 3 is great for either, ready for VMware, in-stock, and shipping now from the US or EU.
With the 2015 holidays now very close, several TinkerTry visitors have asked me if I think they should wait for the minor CPU speed bump and/or SR-IOV compatibility expected to arrive with Intel's Xeon D-1541 CPU. For most people, that answer has been no, but of course, that decision is very individual. Let's start with the background on this innovative new chipset, the roughly $850 CPU/mobo SoC (System on Chip) Xeon D-1540:
5% speed boost, at most
It's hard to claim a 5% boost is expected to be very noticeable for most use-cases. So let's move on and look at SR-IOV. I admit, I actually never got around to enabling it on my Intel I350T2 PCI card in my older vZilla build, nor did I have a way to really test it back then. Worry not, Patrick Kennedy of Serve The Home has an excellent article all about SR-IOV:
Here's an excerpt:
SR-IOV is away to have a Single Root Function (e.g. an Ethernet Port) appear to be multiple separate physical devices. This is useful for virtualization because one can reduce virtualization overhead using a single port rather than adding ports and assigning them to each VM. A useful case here is adding 10GbE to a server than having the NIC shared with multiple VMs.
For me, the virtual switch you can set up under ESXi 6.0 seems to work fine, attaching it to my 1GbE or 10GbE physical interfaces, as needed. Speeds given my modest workloads seem tip top too. My initial tests done with a 2nd borrowed SuperSuper went well using just a CAT6a cable, with auto-crossover avoiding the need for a pricey 10GbE switch. With a few VMs, do I really expect SR-IOV to make a difference, and be worth the significant drawback of not being able to vMotion any VMs that leverage this feature? For me, the answer happens to be no.
All the differences between Xeon D-1540 and Xeon D-1541
Finally, let's move on to the other API features that Intel added to the 1541. I believe you'll find Intel ARK Compare Intel Products feature very handy for this:
Yeah, not sure why I'd want DDR3 at this point, especially given it's less than $1000 for 4 of those tested Samsung 32GB DDR4 low voltage modules, totaling 128GB of RAM. That's a LOT of VMs you can juggle, for a price that's likely similar to DDR3 (tested DDR3 modules aren't listed by Supermicro yet.
You may notice that Supermicro's X10SDV-TLN4F motherboard product page already shows:
Intel® Xeon® processor D-1540/1541,
Single socket FCBGA 1667;
8-Core, 16 Threads, 45W
We'll have to wait until the Xeon D-1541 actually arrives to know whether SR-IOV will work. I plans to have the opportunity to do exactly that, and I'm working hard to try to make sure that actually happens.
It's worth nothing that activating SR-IOV requires a BIOS setting, which actually appeared (but didn't function) in the 5028D-TN4T BIOS 1.0a, then went away in 1.0b. Likely because it was reported to not work correctly. This situation was also outlined this Serve The Home forum thread, and this TinkerTry discussion.
In summary
So for folks who would answer yes, they need SR-IOV, then yeah, I would recommend they wait until the Supermicro SuperServer SYS-5028D-TN4T arrives with the Xeon D-1541 on board.
For everybody else, or those who only have time to tinker over the holidays, then by all means, there's no reason to wait.
It would seem the answer for you depends on whether you value absolute performance scalability for heavy workload (production) more than the limitations of SR-IOV (inability to vMotion and some configuration complexity).
Reader mail
A European TinkerTry visitor wrote me recently:
Hello, still the bundle 3 (Supermicro Mini Tower Intel Xeon D-1540 Bundle 3 BV) of your sponsored server avaliable from Europe? I don't want to pay expensive shipping to get one.
Also I'm thinking to wait for Xeon-D 1541 version as long it adds SR-IOV. What's your recommendation?
Thanks for your time.
Here's was my response, unedited:
Yes, Bundle 3 is now available and ships from The Netherlands to all points in Europe (including Spain) for $65 USD:
https://tinkertry.com/superservers#Bundle3I have tested the hardware, and paid for the extras (USB memory, stickers, extra SATA cable, speaker), so the profit for me is extremely tiny. It’s more about building a community of owners, with more announcements coming to TinkerTry soon. I have even personally flown down to Wiredzone in Miami last week:
https://twitter.com/paulbraren/status/672732331581579264
to be sure I’m comfortable putting my reputation on the line for this very affordably priced reseller (all other US resellers charge more, usually much more, especially when adding disk or RAM). I’m so glad Wiredzone is now taking orders to EU too.Admittedly, Intel never did get SR-IOV working with 1540, so if you really need that SR-IOV feature, waiting until Feb. 2016 for the 1541 to arrive would be best for your happiness:
https://tinkertry.com/intel-grows-xeon-d-platform#Below2
the performance boost will be tiny (<5%), and the pricing will likely be the same.Intel often lets dates slip, original 1541 announcement indicated Nov 2015, but that never came true.
I hope you’re now a more informed potential buyer, and hope the EU pricing is favorable, for this fully authorized Supermicro reseller.
Where you wind up buying, you will likely have a hell of a good tinkering with it!
https://twitter.com/paulbraren/status/671907722137370625
See also at TinkerTry
If you decide to buy now, use the order button at right.
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Superguide: Supermicro SuperServer 5028D-TN4T - THE Ultimate Home Virtualization Lab
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Intel Ethernet Server Adapter I350T2 Dual port, for ESXi 5.5 home lab
- Supermicro SuperServer 5028D-TN4T VSAN dream is alive! Home lab video overview features Intel SSDs and Samsung M.2 SSDs
See also
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Wikipedia Wikipedia - Skylake (microarchitecture)
- Wikipedia List of Intel Xeon microprocessors