Supermicro Microcloud | Xtreme CPU http://www.xcpus.com/reviews/supermicro-microcloud[1/19/2012 5:19:47 PM] 2 Supermicro Microcloud Published on December 23, 2011, by Michael Wallace - Posted in Cases , CPUs Compact | Efficient | Practical We have the pleasure to review one of Supermicro’s latest releases: the MicroCloud. The MicroCloud is an evolutionary product that brings high-density computing to small hosting companies by incorporating 8 Sandy Bridge class Xeon servers into a very small 3U form factor. For comparison, your typical rackmount server is 1-2 “Units”, or Us, in height, and a standard cabinet in a datacenter is 42 Us tall. After accounting for space for routers, switches, and power distribution units, you can typically cram about 35-38 Us worth of servers into a standard cabinet before you need to buy more space. If deploying only MicroCloud hardware, this would allow you to serve up to 144 servers in a standard cabinet, assuming 36U of usable space and, of course, power. The MicroCloud we will be testing today consist of 8 Server sleds, and 16 hard drive sleds and 2 Platinum series 85% Efficiency Power supplies. Supermicro tells us there is a 16 sled variant to be released soon, but it was unavailable for testing for this review. System Specifications: Each system within the MicroCloud was configured as follows: 1 Intel Xeon E3-1260L(2.4GHz Low Power) or Xeon E3-1230 (3.2GHz Normal Power) 2 x 2GB of PC3-1333 DDR3 Unbuffered RAM 2 Western Digital RE3 500GB Drives (Enterprise Level) 10 Overall Score Cooling CPUs RAM & Storage Cases Motherboards Graphics G Home Forum Folding @ Home Folding @ Home Stats
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ZTE Tania Windows Phone at CES 10 Zotac booth …reseller.supermicro.com/sites/reseller/files/product...Right hand side we have the dual 1GB Ethernet connections. Top is Ethernet 1,
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Supermicro MicrocloudPublished on December 23, 2011, by Michael Wallace - Posted in Cases, CPUs
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We have the pleasure to review one of Supermicro’s latest releases: the MicroCloud. TheMicroCloud is an evolutionary product that brings high-density computing to small hostingcompanies by incorporating 8 Sandy Bridge class Xeon servers into a very small 3U form factor. For comparison, your typical rackmount server is 1-2 “Units”, or Us, in height, and a standardcabinet in a datacenter is 42 Us tall. After accounting for space for routers, switches, andpower distribution units, you can typically cram about 35-38 Us worth of servers into a standardcabinet before you need to buy more space. If deploying only MicroCloud hardware, this wouldallow you to serve up to 144 servers in a standard cabinet, assuming 36U of usable space and,of course, power. The MicroCloud we will be testing today consist of 8 Server sleds, and 16hard drive sleds and 2 Platinum series 85% Efficiency Power supplies. Supermicro tells usthere is a 16 sled variant to be released soon, but it was unavailable for testing for this review.
System Specifications:
Each system within the MicroCloud was configured as follows:
The chassis is powered by two fully redundant 1620w/1200w (208v/110v) power supplies. Ourtests were performed with the system running on 120v power. Each blade is configured withit’s own IPMI port, which is different from one of the MicroCloud’s direct competitors, the DellViking Series, which shares a central IPMI port for all blades within the chassis. Let’s jump intothis thing and unbox it.
Ted December 26, 2011 at 4:22 am - Reply
Nice review of quite an exotic system. I’ve added the RSS feed to keep updated on thefuture comparisons, but the last entry was in Sept. Might want to update that.
The box was a bit torn up during shipping. Supermicro is notorious for double boxing ALL oftheir equipment that we’ve received, and this is the perfect reason why. Thanks Supermicro!
Front power switch, and indicator lights for each of the 8 nodes.
Back of the MicroCloud is also very simple and clean in design. The two power supplies areon opposite sides of the chassis, and for power cable routing, we prefer this design.
Not the best picture, but this appears to be the networking card. It appears to be a proprietaryslot that it fits into. Maybe we will see some different network cards maybe a dual 10Gadapter.
Close up of the Low Profile PCI-Express slot, Video/USB/Serial on the lower left hand corner,and the IPMI Port.
Right hand side we have the dual 1GB Ethernet connections. Top is Ethernet 1, and Lower isEthernet 0
Ted December 26, 2011 at 4:22 am - Reply
Nice review of quite an exotic system. I’ve added the RSS feed to keep updated on thefuture comparisons, but the last entry was in Sept. Might want to update that.
I was not sure on how much room you had between the nodes, so I bought Low Profilememory. The 8-node MicroCloud, however, does not require LP memory. You can use fullheight memory.
CPU and Memory installed, Time to install the heat sink.
Heat sink installed. I’m not sure if this is reversed or not, I don’t think it should matter really. Itmay be on back wards to help it fit into the chassis better.
The drive caddy has been updated with the MicroCloud. They really are quite a bit sturdierthan they use to be.
Nice review of quite an exotic system. I’ve added the RSS feed to keep updated on thefuture comparisons, but the last entry was in Sept. Might want to update that.
Supermicro MicrocloudPublished on December 23, 2011, by Michael Wallace - Posted in Cases, CPUs
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OS Installation and Testing
Now we get into the fun part: loading the server and testing it. For our testing we will beloading CentOS 5.7 64-bit as our Linux test bed and Windows 2008 R2 SP1 Enterprise as ourWindows test bed. Testing will additionally consist of 2 processors, the low wattage Xeon E3-1260L and the normal wattage processor Xeon E3-1230.
10Overall Score
ZTE Tania Windows Phone atCESJanuary 14, 2012 - 0 comments
Nice review of quite an exotic system. I’ve added the RSS feed to keep updated on thefuture comparisons, but the last entry was in Sept. Might want to update that.
Nice review of quite an exotic system. I’ve added the RSS feed to keep updated on thefuture comparisons, but the last entry was in Sept. Might want to update that.
Nice review of quite an exotic system. I’ve added the RSS feed to keep updated on thefuture comparisons, but the last entry was in Sept. Might want to update that.
Nice review of quite an exotic system. I’ve added the RSS feed to keep updated on thefuture comparisons, but the last entry was in Sept. Might want to update that.
exa byte January 3, 2012 at 6:40 am - Reply
16 sled variant would be awesome
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Supermicro MicrocloudPublished on December 23, 2011, by Michael Wallace - Posted in Cases, CPUs
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Conclusions
The Supermicro MicroCloud is a great step forward for anyone looking to get the most bang fortheir buck out of their rackspace. This marketplace is already starting to get more crowded withthe Dell Viking series and a new 4U, 18 server variant from Tyan recently announced. Werecently completed testing on the Dell Viking and compared to the Supermicro Micro cloud youget fewer servers (8), but those servers have increased flexibility, like the ability to use higherwattage processors. For customers that demand the higher level of performance out of a singleprocessor system, that is a significant advantage. Additionally, because they are binned outand validated at lower wattages, LV processors are not just slower, but they generally cost asmuch or more than their faster, standard wattage cousins. Normal pricing on the Xeon E3-1230 (3.2GHz) is going to be around $240.00 per unit while the Xeon E3-1260L (2.4GHz)isgoing to be closer to 300-350 per unit, and 1200MHz slower.
Our favorite features of the Supermicro MicroCloud was the expansion slot. If you wanted toadd in a LP 2-4Port Gigabit adapter, or a 10GB adapter we had plenty of room to do so. Considering a lot of our cloud hardware runs 10GB ethernet, this was a huge bonus for us.
Overall, we liked the Supermicro MicroCloud enough that we plan on offering it to ourcustomers on the hosting side of the business. It is flexible and practical enough for 8 systemsat the street price of $3700-3800 to make f seems to be a success in our eyes, giving ultimateflexibility while maintaining practical use. During our tests we used a load probe on the power,with the Xeon E3-1260L processors we did not see more than 2.4A of 208V single phaseconsumption during full load on all 8 machines. However, we did not get power readings withXeon E3-1230′s as we only had one of them for testing the difference in clocks and wattage.
We will be writing a review featuring the Microcloud and CA|3Tera Applogic. So please checkback in a couple of weeks.
This product can be found for around 3699.00 shipped to the ConUS at a few online stores.
10Overall Score
ZTE Tania Windows Phone atCESJanuary 14, 2012 - 0 comments