Deep dive inside video of the Supermicro SuperServer 5028D-TN4T including component installation

Posted by Paul Braren on Jul 2 2015 (updated on Jul 26 2015) in

I'm pleased to announce a new video that takes you all around and inside this mini-tower server, with some constructive advice. During the course of this comprehensive look at the physical design, I also find that all of the following assembly was quite straight-forward:

unboxing (extremely simple)
adding 2 32GB memory modules (also easy)
adding a 3.5" drive (straight forward)
adding 2 2.5" SSDs (routing a new cable takes an extra minute)
installing a half-height PCI card (intermediate difficulty)
powering up

Enjoy!

Here's the 20 second trailer/teaser.

Here's the full length hardware deep-dive video.

Here's the full length software deep-dive video.

Windows 10 and ESXi 6.0 are on this SuperServer, including:

Poking around vSphere 6.0 running on this little Xeon Octocore beast.
EVC/vMotion.
Hardware monitoring.
Ejecting a VMFS datastore from ESXi properly.
Showing VT-d (passthrough/VMDirectPath) of the VisionTek 7750 3M PCIe 2GB DDR3 4K UHD 3 Monitor 4K Support Graphics Card, then booting that same Windows 10 VM's SSD natively, which also demonstrates Supermicro iKVM.

A quick look at power-up, with real-time watt burn monitored, 2 SSDs and 1 3.5" HDD, with Microsoft Windows 8.1.

VMware ESXi 6.0, booting off a USB drive.

See also

Necessity to sunset SuperServer Bundles

These systems still work great for many even 9+ years later, mine included, even with (unsupported) vSphere 8 and Windows 11 Version 21H2. But unless you added the optional TPM module, it may be the end of the line as far as repurposing them for running the latest Windows 11 Version 24H2 and beyond.

After 6 successful years testing then shipping well over 1,000 Xeon D Bundles, Wiredzone had to stop SuperServer bundles in mid-2021 due to cost, supply, and logistics challenges. Bare bones system sales continued for years longer.

What's next in 2025? I don't yet have my answer for my home lab, especially now that VCF certification is required to keep non-production home lab licenses going, even as a vExpert and VMUG Advantage EVALExperience customer.

As for a SuperServer follow-on, the Xeon D-1700/2700 (Ice Lake D) was a minor refresh for 2023, with Xeon D-1800/2800 (Granite Rapids D) refresh slightly better in 2024, and hopefully Xeon 6 (Granite Rapids-D) much better in 2025 featuring PCIe Gen5, MCRDIMMs, and 100GbE networking, wow! Feb. 27 2025 update update looks promising, but pricey. Infortunately, it's become clear to me that Supermicro is less focuses on the mini-tower form factor these days.

As for the CPU industry, it's unfortunate that Pat Gelsinger was apparently ousted from Intel's helm in these challenging times, but I'm also grateful to have had the honor of working at VMware when he was the CIO there. I'll leave it at that, given the whole Broadcom thing.