Asus DSGC-DW supported ?

[Miesepies]

The Asus DSGC-DW looks like a very interesting board for a new server. A dual Xeon 771 socket motherboard, i5000X, PCI-E and PCI-X, 8 mem slots, but also sata2 connectors which are "Enabled by LSI MegaRAID driver stack".

Anyone tried this driver stack with ESX 3 ? I know the SAS version of this board should work with ESX (sas controller = LSI 1068) however I haven't seen this board on the pricelists here.

I would like to give this board a try, however it's too expensive to buy and find out it doesn't work.

So if anybody has experience with this board ?

Or... does anyone know of an alternative for this board, e.g. like the Tyan Tempest i5000XT, which does work with ESX 3 ? Especially onboard storage is what I'm interested in, so I can save some $$$ buying a seperate raid controller...

Thanks,

Michel

[davidbarclay]

Here is the supported list;

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_systems_guide.pdf

Anything else will just waste a LOT of your time. If you still want to go this route, search these forums for whitebox and/or SATA.

Dave

[Paul_Lalonde]

I'll have a look at the chipset (Northbridge, Southbridge) for this board and see what I can come up with. If the chipset configuration is found on other "supported" Tier-1 configurations, there may be hope for you.

Paul

[Paul_Lalonde]

Well, as far as the specs go, this board should work for you. Allow me to explain.

The ASUS DSGC-DW appears to be an OEM workstation board modeled after Intel's S5000P/S5000X server board reference.

The good news? The Intel S5000PAL is a \*supported* configuration under the ESX HCL. See the Intel server section, reference S5000PAL/SR1500 through SR2500.

For detailed specs on the Intel board, see:

http://www.intel.com/design/servers/boards/s5000PAL/index.htm

In short, both the ASUS board and the Intel S5000PAL share the same CPU architecture (XEON 5000/5100/5300), S5000 MCH (memory controller hub, aka NorthBridge), and 6321ESB SouthBridge. As well, both boards include the same dual Intel 1000Mbit NICs.

While the ASUS board does include other devices more suited to a workstation board (ie. sound, etc.) I would think that you shouldn't have any trouble with this board and ESX 3.0. Worst case, disable these devices in the BIOS.

Having said that, for assured compatibility with the same level of performance and device support, there's always the Intel S5000PAL motherboard itself. They show up on eBay for peanuts compared to their new list price (~$700 USD).

Regards,

Paul

[Miesepies]

Thanks for the info.

I hoped for this kind of answer. Seeing the used hardware on the board I figured it would work, but decided to ask... It's not like it's a cheap motherboard 😛

Michel

[Paul_Lalonde]

Good luck with this!

PS. When you post a question in the forums and it gets answered to your satisfaction, you are supposed to award points to the person/people answering your question.

I didn't answer the question for points (I just happen to like PC architecture and follow the server-class boards from Intel, ASUS, Tyan, etc.) but it's just a friendly reminder for the future.

Best regards,

Paul

[Miesepies]

Sorry, didn't know... this in my 3rd post here

I think I'm able to get a cheap (read: free) HP P400 SAS controller, so I might actually go for a S5000PAL. It's available here for around €260 (~$300). That would save me a lot of $$$ and be assured of compatibility with ESX...

Michel

[Miesepies]

Grrr... error in the pricelists... It's a module for S5000PAL, not the board itself. Just my luck...