YouTube Video Review - Supermicro SuperServer 5027R-WRF Server Build

We've just uploaded our latest YouTube video - a review of a Supermicro SuperServer 5027R-WRF server solution for a customer of ours.

This system is a full Supermicro SuperServer 5027R-WRF, which is a fantastic enterprise grade 2U Single Socket enabled rackmount server. The SuperServer is in effect a semi-assembled server solution that is based on the SuperChassis CSE-825TQ-R500WB chassis and X9SRW-F Motherboard. It has 8x 3.5" hot-swap bays compatible with SATA and SAS hard drives. The backplane in this chassis has standard discrete SATA connections, so the backplane is compatible with a wide range of motherboards and controller cards. While this particular build used an LSI controller have completed system builds with this chassis using both onboard SATA and other brand RAID/HBA Controllers, including Areca. The chassis includes 3x 80mm PWM (4pin) fans installed in the middle. These are relatively quiet and enable the full system to be cooled sufficiently – they will speed up/down when needed.

Installed in this server were 2x 1TB Seagate Constellation ES2 SATA III, 7200RPM drives (ST32000645NS). These drives are enterprise grade with this range going from 1TB through to 4TB in disk sizes, 6Gbps SATA interface and 64MB Cache. They have an excellent MTBF and are designed for constant, high IO throughput 24/7.

The motherboard used in the system was a Supermicro X9SRW-F running with a Single Intel Xeon E5-2680V2 CPU and 16GB RAM – Made up of 4x 4GB Hynix Validated RAM running at 1866Mhz. This CPU is the latest V2, so has 10 physical cores with HyperThreading, so will present 20 available cores to a guest OS. This motherboard also has onboard VGA, dual Gigabit and a dedicated IPMI Network Interface for remote configuration, monitoring and management of the system. IPMI is a web-based dedicated system on many Supermicro boards (the –F in the model means it has IPMI) that allows any network/Internet connected browsers to access the server securely, and to view status information, but most importantly, allows remote KVM access, so you can control the server as if you were sitting in front of it with a standard keyboard and mouse. This remote KVM functionality works brilliantly and there are no additional licensing costs for this either – You would pay £200+ for this functionality from DELL or HP!

The RAID card used was an LSI 9260-8i SATA/SAS Controller - The AOC Supermicro version. This RAID controller was chosen as it is an excellent model for both price, performance and reliability. The RAID card can support a BBU better cache operations and backup support in the event of power-loss. This system is setup with only 2 drives in RAID 1, so the BBU is not required in this instance.

All of the products seen in the video review are available on our site to purchase individually, however if you would like to talk with us about a custom server configuration please call us on 0800 652 1649 or email us on [email protected]

Check out the video here!