Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?
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Does anyone here have experience with Supermicro's Microcloud servers? I was wondering if there has been any problems with these type of blade servers.
It's 8 to 12 individual servers in 3U sharing only the power supplies.
For example:
https://www.supermicro.com/a_images/products/views/5039MS-H8TRF_front.jpg
https://www.supermicro.com/a_images/products/views/5039MS-H8TRF_rear.jpg -
What's the use case?
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Based on experience with what appears to be re-branded SuperMicro stuff I'lm not a fan. I can't speak to your option specifically but they've been nowhere near as reliable as anything we've gotten from Dell.
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@dashrender said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
What's the use case?
For blades in general? It's hyperconverged infrastructure, hosting environments, container clusters etc. Basically everywhere you want to cram in as much as possible in the least amount of rack space.
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@notverypunny said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
Based on experience with what appears to be re-branded SuperMicro stuff I'lm not a fan. I can't speak to your option specifically but they've been nowhere near as reliable as anything we've gotten from Dell.
We've had bad experience with a certain model SATADOM that Thinkmate sales had recommended for a while.
Sadly I don't think my boss has learned about trusting sales/vendors yet.
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@travisdh1 said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@notverypunny said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
Based on experience with what appears to be re-branded SuperMicro stuff I'lm not a fan. I can't speak to your option specifically but they've been nowhere near as reliable as anything we've gotten from Dell.
We've had bad experience with a certain model SATADOM that Thinkmate sales had recommended for a while.
Sadly I don't think my boss has learned about trusting sales/vendors yet.
A Supermicro SATADOM? Do you know which one?
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@pete-s said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@travisdh1 said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@notverypunny said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
Based on experience with what appears to be re-branded SuperMicro stuff I'lm not a fan. I can't speak to your option specifically but they've been nowhere near as reliable as anything we've gotten from Dell.
We've had bad experience with a certain model SATADOM that Thinkmate sales had recommended for a while.
Sadly I don't think my boss has learned about trusting sales/vendors yet.
A Supermicro SATADOM? Do you know which one?
I don't remember, I used the hammer and concrete method of assured data removal on them. They looked like usb flash drives with a sata connector rather than a usb connector on the side.
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@travisdh1 said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@pete-s said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@travisdh1 said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@notverypunny said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
Based on experience with what appears to be re-branded SuperMicro stuff I'lm not a fan. I can't speak to your option specifically but they've been nowhere near as reliable as anything we've gotten from Dell.
We've had bad experience with a certain model SATADOM that Thinkmate sales had recommended for a while.
Sadly I don't think my boss has learned about trusting sales/vendors yet.
A Supermicro SATADOM? Do you know which one?
I don't remember, I used the hammer and concrete method of assured data removal on them. They looked like usb flash drives with a sata connector rather than a usb connector on the side.
Doesn't sound like Supermicro's own then. They look like this (they don't have a case, just a bare PCB):
https://www.supermicro.com/a_images/products/nfo/SATADOM_x10_connect.jpg -
@notverypunny said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
Based on experience with what appears to be re-branded SuperMicro stuff I'lm not a fan. I can't speak to your option specifically but they've been nowhere near as reliable as anything we've gotten from Dell.
That doesn't sound good for sure. Was it any kind of blade or just regular servers?
Do you remember the brand?
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@pete-s said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@travisdh1 said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@pete-s said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@travisdh1 said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@notverypunny said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
Based on experience with what appears to be re-branded SuperMicro stuff I'lm not a fan. I can't speak to your option specifically but they've been nowhere near as reliable as anything we've gotten from Dell.
We've had bad experience with a certain model SATADOM that Thinkmate sales had recommended for a while.
Sadly I don't think my boss has learned about trusting sales/vendors yet.
A Supermicro SATADOM? Do you know which one?
I don't remember, I used the hammer and concrete method of assured data removal on them. They looked like usb flash drives with a sata connector rather than a usb connector on the side.
Doesn't sound like Supermicro's own then. They look like this (they don't have a case, just a bare PCB):
https://www.supermicro.com/a_images/products/nfo/SATADOM_x10_connect.jpgThey used a similar layout to that picture, but they had very few components on the circuit board. Found my old pictures tho, they were branded Innodisk, SATADOM-ML 3ME3.
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@pete-s said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@notverypunny said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
Based on experience with what appears to be re-branded SuperMicro stuff I'lm not a fan. I can't speak to your option specifically but they've been nowhere near as reliable as anything we've gotten from Dell.
That doesn't sound good for sure. Was it any kind of blade or just regular servers?
Do you remember the brand?
A backup appliance from a vendor who shall remain nameless
Also some blade-style appliances for a hyperconverged plaform who shall also remain nameless.
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@pete-s said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@dashrender said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
What's the use case?
For blades in general? It's hyperconverged infrastructure, hosting environments, container clusters etc. Basically everywhere you want to cram in as much as possible in the least amount of rack space.
I suppose - but damn - that seems like a HUGE amount of compute power next to low amount of storage. If that's the setup you need - again HUGE amount of compute and tiny storage, then it's probably just fine.
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@dashrender said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@pete-s said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@dashrender said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
What's the use case?
For blades in general? It's hyperconverged infrastructure, hosting environments, container clusters etc. Basically everywhere you want to cram in as much as possible in the least amount of rack space.
I suppose - but damn - that seems like a HUGE amount of compute power next to low amount of storage. If that's the setup you need - again HUGE amount of compute and tiny storage, then it's probably just fine.
I know what you mean but it's not really that low. Consider that the server I linked to have 16x3.5" bays. So you can have 2 x 18TB (standard enterprise size in stock) per node or 288 TB of raw storage per 3U rack. A rack full of those will give you over 3 PB of disk or 1.5PB of SSDs (8TB ea).
There are other models too, some have 4 bays per node. So you have some options.
https://www.supermicro.com/a_images/products/views/5039MS-H12TRF_node.jpg
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@pete-s said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@dashrender said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@pete-s said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@dashrender said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
What's the use case?
For blades in general? It's hyperconverged infrastructure, hosting environments, container clusters etc. Basically everywhere you want to cram in as much as possible in the least amount of rack space.
I suppose - but damn - that seems like a HUGE amount of compute power next to low amount of storage. If that's the setup you need - again HUGE amount of compute and tiny storage, then it's probably just fine.
I know what you mean but it's not really that low. Consider that the server I linked to have 3.5" bays. So you can have 2 x 18TB (standard enterprise size in stock) per node or 288 TB of raw storage per 3U rack. A rack full of those will give you over 3 PB of disk or 1.5PB of SSDs (8TB ea).
There are other models too, some have 4 bays per node. So you have some options.
https://www.supermicro.com/a_images/products/views/5039MS-H12TRF_node.jpg
that storage ends up being soooo incredibly slow, the power of the CPUs seems like they would be wasted.
Now if all of the storage is hanging off a single or split between two/three nodes, then we start looking more like a Scale box, only way smaller.
I'd be worried about only having two power supplies in there too. that might be a folly on my part, but with that many drives/CPUs and only two PS's?
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@dashrender said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@pete-s said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@dashrender said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@pete-s said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@dashrender said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
What's the use case?
For blades in general? It's hyperconverged infrastructure, hosting environments, container clusters etc. Basically everywhere you want to cram in as much as possible in the least amount of rack space.
I suppose - but damn - that seems like a HUGE amount of compute power next to low amount of storage. If that's the setup you need - again HUGE amount of compute and tiny storage, then it's probably just fine.
I know what you mean but it's not really that low. Consider that the server I linked to have 3.5" bays. So you can have 2 x 18TB (standard enterprise size in stock) per node or 288 TB of raw storage per 3U rack. A rack full of those will give you over 3 PB of disk or 1.5PB of SSDs (8TB ea).
There are other models too, some have 4 bays per node. So you have some options.
that storage ends up being soooo incredibly slow, the power of the CPUs seems like they would be wasted.
Now if all of the storage is hanging off a single or split between two/three nodes, then we start looking more like a Scale box, only way smaller.
I'd be worried about only having two power supplies in there too. that might be a folly on my part, but with that many drives/CPUs and only two PS's?
Today you don't need a lot of spindles in an array to get speed. Storage would be blazing fast with for example two NVMe drives per node.
8TB is readily available but you could get 16TB NVMe drives too.
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@dashrender said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
I'd be worried about only having two power supplies in there too. that might be a folly on my part, but with that many drives/CPUs and only two PS's?
PSUs are 2kW each so they can handle all nodes running at 100% on a continuous basis. It would have been very surprising if they haven't figured that part out.
That being said, I don't have any practical experience with these models. Maybe power supply failure is common.
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@pete-s said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@dashrender said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@pete-s said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@dashrender said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@pete-s said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
@dashrender said in Experience with Supermicro Microcloud servers?:
What's the use case?
For blades in general? It's hyperconverged infrastructure, hosting environments, container clusters etc. Basically everywhere you want to cram in as much as possible in the least amount of rack space.
I suppose - but damn - that seems like a HUGE amount of compute power next to low amount of storage. If that's the setup you need - again HUGE amount of compute and tiny storage, then it's probably just fine.
I know what you mean but it's not really that low. Consider that the server I linked to have 3.5" bays. So you can have 2 x 18TB (standard enterprise size in stock) per node or 288 TB of raw storage per 3U rack. A rack full of those will give you over 3 PB of disk or 1.5PB of SSDs (8TB ea).
There are other models too, some have 4 bays per node. So you have some options.
that storage ends up being soooo incredibly slow, the power of the CPUs seems like they would be wasted.
Now if all of the storage is hanging off a single or split between two/three nodes, then we start looking more like a Scale box, only way smaller.
I'd be worried about only having two power supplies in there too. that might be a folly on my part, but with that many drives/CPUs and only two PS's?
Today you don't need a lot of spindles in an array to get speed. Storage would be blazing fast with for example two NVMe drives per node.
8TB is readily available but you could get 16TB NVMe drives too.
yeah, NVMe would be fast... I made an assumption before looking more closely at your picture that it was limited to HDDs.
which today would just be stupid.. so my bad.
