2012 Essentials seems to use CAL, which from my limited understanding is related to how many users/devices can be using businessy services off of the same server. Does that directly apply to IIS? IIS comes pre-installed on 2012 Essentials from what I read and I'm trying to figure out whether I need Standard or can save hundreds of $ and get an Essentials license for my home server to run a private beta of my new web app off of a T110 in my closet. Could not find this via Google, does anyone know for sure?

@thecreativeone91 said:

Looks like it has a M.2 SSD plus a standard SATA HDD for mass storage is what I see.

Perfect, thank you.

I ordered one earlier, and then find out in a NewEgg video that opening the case voids your warranty. Super annoying. I have no use for a 7200 RPM drive or the power it consumes so would love to just pluck that out.

@Mike-Ralston said:

It's a SATA NANDFlash chip on an M.2 Drive, that's all. An M.2 drive can come in multiple lengths, as long as you get the right size, and plug it in, it should be perfectly fine.

The drive that comes with it is or the drives that are compatible with it are?

Looking at this 17" workstation, which has a 128 GB SSD in it.

Where I'm confused is here:
http://screencast.com/t/gjYhHjdqwFb

I can't tell if it's saying the 128GB SSD is M2, or if the motherboard just has an M2 slot or what.

Full specs:
http://us.msi.com/product/notebook/GS70-Stealth-Pro-GTX-970M.html#hero-specification

Supposing what comes w/ it is an mSata and not an M2, and the motherboard supports M2, does that mean I can buy any M2 drive and put it in the case? Or are there laptop/desktop sizes? Thx.

Overall, super disappointing write performance.

It's possible that the RAID-level underprovisioning does nothing. Really, really wish Rapid Mode worked across more than one drive, it'd be the perfect solution for use cases like this.

@MattSpeller said:

Even if there was an answer out there already to this, I'd still encourage you to do it and post more benchmark porn.

Kind of leads into another question, which is, if I'm running 100% high-performance SSDs, should I go ahead and turn off the cache of the Raid controller itself? I guess I could benchmark it with and without.

@MattSpeller said:

H700 datasheet:
https://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pvaul/en/perc-technical-guidebook.pdf

"4.2 CacheCade
CacheCade provides cost-effective performance scaling for database-type application profiles in a
host-based RAID environment by extending the PERC RAID controller cache with the addition of Dellqualified
Enterprise SSDs.
CacheCade identifies frequently-accessed areas within a data set and copies this data to a Dellqualified,
Enterprise SSD (SATA or SAS), enabling faster response time by directing popular Random
Read queries to the CacheCade SSD instead of to the underlying HDD.
Supporting up to 512 GB of extended cache, CacheCade SSDs must all be the same interface (SATA or
SAS) and will be contained in the server or storage enclosure where the RAID array resides.
CacheCade SSDs will not be a part of the RAID array.
CacheCade is a standard feature on, and only available with, the PERC H700/H800 1 GB NV Cache
RAID controller.
CacheCade SSDs can be configured using the PERC BIOS Configuration Utility or OpenManage."

Sorry, posted that before this popped in.

@MattSpeller said:

I searched through it's data sheet, I see a few related things. I think it's to do with the H700 1GB supporting SSD cache??

http://i.dell.com/sites/content/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/dell-poweredge-r620-technical-guide.pdf

"Storage controllers
Dell provides highly capable RAID options for you to ensure that your data remains safe. Dell’s RAID
controller options offer impressive performance improvements, including the following features:
 FastPath I/O: This feature can help accelerate performance when operating on SSDs. "

Interesting. I know this server has a technology called CacheCade which is where you run mostly HDDS and then throw a single SSD into the mix up to 512GB which it can use as a cache similar to how hybrids/FusionDrives work. Thanks for the info.

Have a Dell R620, the bios on which supports a feature called "i/oat dma engine", which a quick Google revealed that some people had claimed made a huge performance difference but *in order to work required that your full stack was Intel/compatible, not just your motherboard.

Have any of you used this? Do you know how I'd tell whether my R620 fully supports it?

From Wikipedia
I/O Acceleration Technology (I/OAT) is a DMA engine (an embedded DMA controller) by Intel bundled with high-end server motherboards, that offloads memory copies from the main processor by performing direct memory accesses (DMA). It is typically used for accelerating network traffic, but supports any kind of copies.
Using I/OAT for network acceleration is supported by Microsoft Windows since the release of Scalable Networking Pack for Windows Server 2003 SP1.[1] It was used by the Linux kernel starting in 2006[2] but this feature was subsequently disabled due to the possibility of data corruption.[3]

For what it's worth, I've had a few XPSs myself in the past, 2 laptops and a desktop, and I thought they were all great. I'm sure the desktop isn't comparable to what you can do on the same budget if you build yourself, but Dell has insane promotions and 40% off coupons on their refurbs, which use a dynamic pricing model so you can get ridiculous prices sometimes if you keep an eye out and act fast ( people gobble them up when the sale starts ).

My mom actually still uses my old M1330 with the lid closed plugged into a high-def t.v. as her daily driver what feels like a decade later. The battery gave out eventually, but was replaceable for $29, the only maintenance it's needed.

Disclaimer: I've also had 2 Optiplexes and thought they were great as well

If you rely on Dell for support and longer warranty options, go Optiplex. If not and you're looking for the highest performance to price ratio, go XPS. All in all there are a lot of similarities and the only palpable differences you'll hit are:

XPS visual designs can be a little bit more flamboyant
XPS motherboard and PSU combos are more likely to support high-end graphics cards and other extensibility options

If you want the equivalent of performance of some of the XPS options you'll see at a much lower price point you'll need to step up to Dell Precision workstations, which are pretty pricey.

My $0.02

Sent the Precision back.

So scratch what I said earlier, this is my new case:

And my new plan is to attempt to get just a new motherboard and a new graphics card and transplant the T110's internals to it while I strategize and build skills for an OC Skylake build. That said, I need a little guidance:

1. You can transplant procs from one motherboard to another, right?

2. I'm a big foggy on sockets. My proc is a Xeon E3-1240 v2, which Intel.com lists as FCLGA1155. But, I'm only seeing LGA1155 sockets on, say, NewEgg. Googled it a bit and most people say "The Xeons should work in LGA1155 boards", but I'd like to be sure before buying because: restocking fees.

Thanks!

@scottalanmiller said:

This is RAID 1. RAID 1 with a quintuple mirror. This would border on the crazy. Even with spinning rust, a standard RAID 1 (two way mirror) has a failure rate lower than 1/160,000 years. Each additional drive in the mirror takes that up orders of magnitude.

With the first option I was just mentioning an arbitrary, contrived example of another span configuration the controller would let me do in its Raid 10 config wizard in hopes that if there was a flaw in my 2-drives-per-span thinking someone would point it out to me. Everything you've said makes sense, thank you.

Was thinking this was the case, thanks.

@scottalanmiller said:

No, not unless you are using multiple controllers or multiple ports on a controller. As long as they are all on a single bus, they are all equal. Best practice is to not even have knowledge of which slots are which. That's for the controller to manage.

Strip size options:

Setting up a from-scratch Raid 10 comprising 10 SSDs.

1. The following summarizes my understanding of it and my approach, please correct any poor conceptualization or misunderstnading on my part:

Spans can be thought of as groups of mirroring.

One option for a Raid 10 of 10 drives would be 2 sets of 5-drive spans, which would let almost all of the drives fail ( as long as 1 in each span was alive ) . This would only get you the write performance of a Raid 0 of 2 drives, and would kill most of your capacity.

Another, better strategy would be 5 spans of 2 drives each, which would let any drive fail without data loss, and up to 5 total drives, but data can potentially be lost as soon as the 2nd failure ( if somehow both drives of the same span died first ). This option gives you the write performance benefits similar to a 5-drive Raid 0 ( though not exactly, because of the mirror penalty ), so is the best mix of performance and redundancy in a 10-drive Raid 10.

Is that about right?

2. For a full stack web application deployment where I'll run IIS, MySQL, NoSQL, a Java-based app server, and a few other things, with the highest priority on MySQL-performance, what block size should I go with?

3. Does it matter which physical disks slots I group into each span? Is there a statistically significant improvement in drive failure rate by pairing up drives further apart from each other? A performance hit?

Thanks!

@Dashrender said:

Do you have any NICs in the expansion slots? I don't know if you can disable their booting ability, and even if you can, they probably still need to load something at boot time that is separate from the MB BIOS/UEFI.

I think it's just a single Intel 4 jack network daughter card and not in an expansion slot, I'll look into that, thanks.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2050443

Looks like it can cause issues w/ ESX/ESXi, so if the box was used as a v-farm that could've been why.

Interestingly, the Dell manual for the R620 says that the feature is enabled by default but it's disabled on mine ( which was a refub, so it could've been the previous owner or the Hosting company making guesses during initial set up ).