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
  • Virtualization
  • Memory
  • HomeLab
  • HomeServer

    • 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:

    1. unboxing (extremely simple)
    2. adding 2 32GB memory modules (also easy)
    3. adding a 3.5" drive (straight forward)
    4. adding 2 2.5" SSDs (routing a new cable takes an extra minute)
    5. installing a half-height PCI card (intermediate difficulty)
    6. 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

    TinkerTry - PCs, EVs, home tech, efficiency and more, including virtualization. My opinions here, not my employer's.

    Paul Braren, MCSE in 1998, VCP #2681 in 2005, vExpert 2014 to 2024, Veeam Vanguard Emeritus, 2015 to 2019.

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    After 6 successful years testing then shipping well over 1,000 Xeon D Bundles, Wiredzone had to stop selling them in mid-2021 due to cost, supply, and logistics challenges. So far, Xeon D-1700/2700 (Ice Lake D) was a minor refresh for 2023, with Xeon D-1800/2800 (Granite Rapids D) refresh looking a little better for 2024. More cores, but still just PCIe Gen4 and DDR4. Looking ahead, I'm glad it's Pat Gelsinger at Intel's helm. I'm also grateful to have had the honor of working at VMware when Pat was the CIO there. I'll leave it at that, given the whole Broadcom thing.

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