WS2012 R2 Motherboard for Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge

[purepense]

I have a project to create my first mini atx server with WS2012 R2 for virtualization training, and at the same time this server will be my file server backup and streaming server.

 

I choose the Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge because is low power CPU (69W)

I don’t have any motherboard brand preferences as long is compatible with WS2012 R2 and virtualization.

Any suggestion?

[JDFrench3]

I would give the Supermicro X9SCM-F-O motherboard a recommendation. Once you get a server motherboard with IPMI you won't want to work without it. Just make sure you get the X9SCM-F-O motherboard with the 2.0a BIOS installed.

[purepense]

That MOBO  X9SCM-F-O was in my list but I read some reviews that is not compatible with Server 2012 Hyper-V, (Newegg  reviews)

 

Someone suggests the super micro MBD-X9SCL-F-B but I believe was discontinued from super micro, probably because is an older version.

[Andne]

Not compatible with Server 2012 Hyper-V?  I'm pretty sure that I'm running Hyper-V on it currently.  I have a second one running Server 2012 Essentials (not R2), but I'm planning on repurposing that machine soon since I think I'm finally done migrating to R2.

 

I do have the occasional issue with connecting to the computer via one of the onboard ports, it doesn't seem to like high load (the port powered by the LM chip iirc), but the other has worked fine for me.  I added a couple of PCI-Express cards to the hyper-v machine to handle the networking needs of the virtual machines on it.

 

I am planning on upgrading the hyper-v box to 2012 R2 (Hyper-V core most likely) once I have finished pulling the rest of the data off on one of the VM's that it is currently running.  I guess I haven't really done any research to see if there are compatibility issues, but I figured it would be fine since it runs 2012 R1 ok.

[purepense]

I would give the Supermicro X9SCM-F-O motherboard a recommendation. Once you get a server motherboard with IPMI you won't want to work without it. Just make sure you get the X9SCM-F-O motherboard with the 2.0a BIOS installed.

JDFrench3,

Thank you for your advice and I will make sure the Bios 2.0a is installed if I decide to buy this MOBO

[purepense]

Not compatible with Server 2012 Hyper-V?  I'm pretty sure that I'm running Hyper-V on it currently.  I have a second one running Server 2012 Essentials (not R2), but I'm planning on repurposing that machine soon since I think I'm finally done migrating to R2.

 

I do have the occasional issue with connecting to the computer via one of the onboard ports, it doesn't seem to like high load (the port powered by the LM chip iirc), but the other has worked fine for me.  I added a couple of PCI-Express cards to the hyper-v machine to handle the networking needs of the virtual machines on it.

 

I am planning on upgrading the hyper-v box to 2012 R2 (Hyper-V core most likely) once I have finished pulling the rest of the data off on one of the VM's that it is currently running.  I guess I haven't really done any research to see if there are compatibility issues, but I figured it would be fine since it runs 2012 R1 ok.

I search for other options and looks like this is the MOBO with less issues, I buy my CPU from New egg and I just request a motherboard and memory quote from serversdirect.com

Since Im not expert in hardware I prefer them to choose the right memory for this motherboard.

 

I may have all my hardware this weekend ready to install WS2012 R2, I let you know the results.

Thank you for you advice.

[Poppapete]

Did you install R2 on a Supermicro board?

Any problems?

How do you load the OS using IPMI?

[Andne]

I have been able to install Hyper-V 2012 R2 on my X9SCM-F-O board with a Xeon processor.  Usually I load CD's through the java app that connects to the console, but ever since I upgraded the BIOS and firmware, I haven't been able to get that to work.  In the web pages for the IPMI configuration, there is a way to mount an ISO file via a network share, so I ended up having to do that in order to install Windows.

 

I installed the free 2012R2 Hyper-V standalone server on my box, don't have access to any 'production' versions of server 2012 to install them.  So far it works fine for me, I have a Linux guest and a server 2012 guest running.  My hard drive configuration leaves some speed to be desired I think, but that's a function of how I set it up, not so much the motherboard or CPU.  I have a RAID card installed that handles the data drives, since there are only 2 6GB/s ports on that motherboard.

[Drashna Jaelre]

Umm, the TechNet Eval center has ISOs you can download of 2012 and 2012R2. It says Datacenter, but it should have both Standard and Datacenter editions on it. So you could have done that.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dn205286.aspx

180 days, and you'd need a key after that, but either way...

 

as for disk speed, that's why people set up RAID arrays. Faster VHD storage.

[Andne]

With a server 2012 essentials box around as a domain controller, I don't really need to have anything other that the free Hyper-V server installed anyways.  Just control it from my other computers, and the IPMI console access is good enough for the few occasions when I do need to do something directly (like installing updates, doesn't work through most other methods).

 

I know that really setting up the RAID array would probably help.  The card is an LSI 9211-4i (I think, something in that generation at least) that I have flashed into IT mode, so it acts only as an HBA.  I didn't want to set up a hardware RAID array because then I have one more UI I need to get into in order to administer things.  Maybe not the best way to handle things, but so far it seems to be functional at least.  I have 4x1TB WD reds in a 2-way mirror storage space.  I was hoping that it would mirror + stripe, but I'm not certain that it has actually done that based on which HDD indicators flash when a VM is running.