Upgrade from X10SL7-F to a 2011-v3 motherboard

[trumee]

Hello,

My X10SL7-F has running very well. However, I would like to plan for 10Gb networking and more disks. Unfortunately, the motherboard has very limited expansion (1x PCI-E x8 and 1x PCI-E x4). I want to add a SFP+ 10Gb card (CHELSIO T420CR) and an additional LSI raid HBA both which require an x8 slot. The X10SL7-F does not have slots to support these.

Looking at Supermicro website the two boards which look interesting are x10SRi-F and X10SRH-CLN4F. The latter is more expensive but has an onboard SAS controller. However, it does not have a PCI-E x16 slot unlike the former. The cost difference between the two is $115 USD, which is about the same as cost of IBM 1015 on ebay.

What will be a better motherboard for future expansion?

Thanks

 

[Stux]

X10SRL-F is also worth looking at.

I recently purchased the Sri-f. Mainly because of the x16 slot.

The x10srl has 5 x8 slots. So you can add a 10gbe nic, 2 HBAs and still have two x8 slots.

But you can't add any x16 cards.

There are some pcie3 x4 10gbe nics coming out.

The sri only has two x8 slots. Big difference to the SRL

And SuperMicro does make boards with sas or 10gbe

PCIe NVMe SSDs are a thing now and they're currently saturating Gen3 x4 bandwidth. It won't be long before x8 SSDs start appearing I think.

 

[trumee]

It seems that X10SRL-F is better geared for x8 slots. It has 2 extra PCIE-3 x8 slots compared to X10SRI-F. Are there any cards which need x16 slots (apart from video cards)?

 

[Stux]

It seems that X10SRL-F is better geared for x8 slots. It has 2 extra PCIE-3 x8 slots compared to X10SRI-F. Are there any cards which need x16 slots (apart from video cards)?

Not really. There are sometimes PCIe extenders which will run a x16 out to an external PCIe chassis, or m2/u2 cards which will split the x16 into 4 m2 or u2 slots. but with 5 x8 slots, or 4 x8 and 2 x4.... all at gen 3 speeds, there's probably not much need for addition m2/u2 carriers :)

I went with the SRi-f originally because it was the only one I could get, and I thought the x16 would come in handy. In retrospect, I probably should've gone with the SRL.

The SRH-CF only has 3 x8 slots and 1 x4 (gen3). Of course, the LSI3008 gives you 8 SAS3 ports. Which would normally use up a full Gen3 x8 slots.

Essentially, the SRH is the SRi with 8 of the x16 lanes redirected to the LSI3008. The LSI3008 would have double the bandwidth of the LSI2008 that is normally recommended (ie IBM M1015/M1115).

 

[trumee]

SRi-F supports i350 nics while SRL-F has i210 nics. Is that much of an advantage?

SRi-F is cheaper to me (open box) but SRL-F seems to a better choice.

 

[jgreco]

Hello,

My X10SL7-F has running very well. However, I would like to plan for 10Gb networking and more disks. Unfortunately, the motherboard has very limited expansion (1x PCI-E x8 and 1x PCI-E x4). I want to add a SFP+ 10Gb card (CHELSIO T420CR) and an additional LSI raid HBA both which require an x8 slot. The X10SL7-F does not have slots to support these.

You may be confused. The X10SL7 can certainly handle an additional HBA and the Chelsio card. Neither of these "requires" a slot that is electrically x8, and both slots on the SL7 should accommodate a physical x8 card, even if one of them is only PCIe 2.0. Just plug them in and go.

You're also failing to consider the expansion capabilities of your mainboard. You can easily hook up an SAS expander to the existing SAS ports and get a large amount of expansion capability in this manner. I believe the 2308 on there will do up to 1000 drives, though in practice you probably shouldn't try more than a hundred.

Until you actually need to replace your existing system, i.e. you're actually out of RAM or CPU or expansion capability, the wise thing to do may be to hold off on replacing the mainboard. We're starting to see 12Gbps SAS integrated on boards, plus other interesting options, and if you can hold off a year and maybe set aside the money you were going to spend today, you'll get a better deal tomorrow, I *think*.

 

[Ericloewe]

I believe the 2308 on there will do up to 1000 drives, though in practice you probably shouldn't try more than a hundred.

I think they specify 1024 SAS devices, which makes me wonder if they ever really tried to test such an insane configuration.

 

[trumee]

You may be confused. The X10SL7 can certainly handle an additional HBA and the Chelsio card. Neither of these "requires" a slot that is electrically x8, and both slots on the SL7 should accommodate a physical x8 card, even if one of them is only PCIe 2.0. Just plug them in and go.

I looked into the card details. The Chelsio card T420-CR requires an x8 slot. The SAS expander Intel RES2SV240 requires a x4 interface and an IBM-1015 LSI card requires a x8 interface. Can I run these cards to their full potential on X10Sl7-F?

 

[Stux]

The SAS expander doesn't require any slots, you can power it from the a Peripheral (ie 4 pin molex) connector. The x4 interface that it 'uses' is just a convenient way to power/secure it. I think it would make a good thing to put in a x1/x2 Gen2 slot ;)

Not sure about Chelsio, but the IBM 1015 will work in a x4 slot, it will only have 16gbps of bandwidth tho. That will limit it to circa 200-250MB/s per drive. Which is not so bad... unless you want to use a SAS expander...

 

[jgreco]

You *are* confused. The Chelsio T420-CR requires a physical x8 or greater slot, but will of course work in even an x1 electrical slot (though not real fast). The SAS expander requires zero PCIe lanes and can literally be taped someplace convenient in the chassis. It can be installed in a slot as one option. The M1015, as with the T420-CR, will also work in a smaller slot.

Whether or not these will run "at their full potential" is something of a different matter, but in all cases, they'll work better than the alternative (not having them).