Ask An Expert - The Server Room

[idata]

<![CDATA[<font size="3">Welcome to intel.com/ITopia. Join the discussion, debate and collaborate. This is your opportunity to *ask our experts* what you want to know about Intel's latest technologies. The floor is yours.]]><![CDATA[<hr>]]><![CDATA[<font size="2">+This discussion is not intended to answer PC support question. If you have a support question go to {document:id=1086}.+]]>

[idata]

What is the fully supported Intel Mother Board with

Q9450,Q6600,E8400 Processor.

[William_L_Intel1]

In general, all of these processors use LGA775 socket compatible. Since there are many choices for this socket type, http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/CS-023522.htm click here to check out your options.

When you click on a desktop board, the next page will show which processors are supported. Let us know if this fully answers your question.

[idata]

Thanks William!

[idata]

Hello,

Please find the Supported Intel Motherboads for Q9450:

http://processormatch.intel.com/CompDB/SearchResult.aspx?ProcNbr=Q9450

Supported Intel Motherboads for Q6600:

http://processormatch.intel.com/CompDB/SearchResult.aspx?ProcNbr=Q6600

Supported Intel Motherboads for E8400:

http://processormatch.intel.com/CompDB/SearchResult.aspx?ProcNbr=E8400

I hope it helps,

Vikas

[idata]

I need to know if the L2 cache in the E5405 or the E7310 utilizes ECC for error protection, and if not do any of the curent quad core Zeons do so?

thanks

John.F.Harvey@hp.com

[idata]

Yes. The L2 Caches on all Intel Xeon processors are protected by ECC. The L3 Caches, when present, are also protected by ECC.

[idata]

Hi is cache on Core processor family support ECC same as Xeon?

[William_L_Intel1]

If you are still looking for comments & suggestions on your questions, please start a new thread http://communities.intel.com/post!input.jspa?communityID=2026 HERE . Thanks for your participation in our forum.

[idata]

Reason for this set of questions: It is nice to have an external backup drive on SMB servers, but USB and Firewire connections are very slow compared to e-SATA. An external drive with an e-SATA connection is preferable because the backup/copy time is so much shorter. The DQ34JOE motherboard has a red SATA connection that is specifically designated for e-SATA use. Other motherboards, such as ServerBoard S5000PSLSATAR, do not. I know I could try this out to see if it can be done, but I would think you already have answers. QUESTION 1: Are there any issues or reasons why one of the SATA connections on the S5000 boards should not be used for an e-SATA connection? QUESTION 2: Since the DQ35JOE board has a designated e-SATA port, is there a software, firmware, or BIOS setting that should be set on the S5000 board to identify a particular SATA connection for use as an e-SATA connection? QUESTION 3: If I can use one of the SATA connections on S5000 boards for e-SATA use, can you give me the part number of the cable and back slot adapter that so I can purchase it for current and future server boards?

[William_L_Intel1]

In response to eSATA questions:

Q1. Are there any issues or reasons why one of the SATA connections on the S5000 boards should not be used for an e-SATA connection?

A1: Intel hasn't validated this configuration, but would expect that an eSATA cabling from the SATA ports would work. Note: Many Serial ATA drives use new low-voltage power connectors and require adapters or power supplies equipped with low-voltage power connectors. For more information, click http://www.serialata.org/ here.

Q2: Since the DQ35JOE board has a designated e-SATA port, is there a software, firmware, or BIOS settiing that should be set on the S5000 board to identify a particular SATA connection for use as an e-SATA connection?

A2. For the BIOS, no specific issues. Only issue is consideration for eSATA drives is when configuring a RAID environment.

Q3: If I can use one of the SATA connections on the S5000 board for e-SATA use, can you give me the part number of the cable and back slot adapter so I can purchase it for current and future server boards?

A3. No specific cable recommendations, but if you try one, we would appreciate if you get back to us on how it went. There are cable solutions available which can port an existing SATA ports to external eSATA connections, you may want to look http://www.pcconnection.com/IPA/Shop/Product/Detail.htm?sku=7495641&oext=1038A&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=7495641 here.

[Curt_B_Intel]

Another follow-up to the eSATA question:

You're right - having an eSATA drive is great for backup/copy due to the higher speeds and the fact that it uses the SATA protocol to transfer, so there is no protocol conversion overhead.

The specification for eSATA states slightly higher maximum transmission amplitudes (voltage) and slightly lower minimum detection amplitude to make up for the longer cables (2m) that can be used for eSATA. That is why the connector is red on the DQ35J0E board and why it is not recommended for use with an internal drive. The S5000 board doesn't use those higher/lower amplitudes, so if you use a longer external cable, with the extra shielding, you may not have a completely robust signal at the drive. Everything may work fine, but you might be better off purchasing a PCIe plug-in card that was designed for eSATA and using that in your S5000 board.

Best Regards,

Curt

[idata]

Well, I ordered two e-SATA adapters with two e-SATA connectors on each to try them out, so I'll see if they work or not. I looked at the e-SATA cards last night and will probably try one of those out as well. Microsoft recommends TWO external hard drives for backups of Small Business Server 2008, which is 64-bit software, so being able to support some sort of very fast external backup for full backups would be worthwhile for Intel. It appears that the SATA-300 throughput is the rate limiting step to the whole process.

[idata]

we recently got intel sh3200hsh server board.

in specs and in technical description theres is mention about Server Engines Pilot built-in chip and about IPKVM possibility. But in user manual or bios menu there no any knobs and instructions how to use this functionality ?

[William_L_Intel1]

Thanks for your question on the SH3200 Server Board. I did some digging and it looks like the technical documentation is incorrect in this case. The IP KVM feature is not supported. I understand the documentation will be updated to reflect that.

[idata]

that is very bad. intel embedded management chip in board but hasn't acquired or developed firmware. Intel partners - Server Engines and AMI (http://www.americanmegatrends.com/products/product.cfm?CatID=4&SubID=29&prodid=210) have all needed for this functionality. HP server for years have iLO functionality.

[idata]

I have 2 quad Xeons in each one of my HP BL680s. I have find out which procs are compatable with each other. Where

is the rev version located on the proc. do you have a picture that could be forwarded. This is kind of a witch hunt. Thanks,

jeff

[William_L_Intel1]

To Jeff,

The BL680 servers are using the XEON 7000 series processors. To know which one exactly, you would need to send the codes from the top of the processor.

Thanks, whlea

[idata]

Where can I find an explanation of why hyperthreading is not a feature of the Xeon 5160 dual core processor (currently available in the latest model of the HP ProLiant DL380 G5)?

[William_L_Intel1]

Thanks for your question on the Intel XEON 5160 DC processor. The quick answer is that the 51xx-series processors does not have Hyper-Threading technology supported in the micro-architecture. Additionally, the product was still able achieve outstanding performance and removing it for this generation enabled Intel to simplify and streamline the core design. For additonal information on Intel processors and features, I recommend you browse http://support.intel.com/support/processors/ here.

[Christophe_P_Intel]

When introduced the new multi-core Xeon processors based on Intel Core Microarchitecure in the middle of 2006, we combined key features from the mobile, desktop and server architectures into a common architecture that could serve all high volume environments. In making this transition, we dropped hyper-threading (temporarily), and focused cpu innovation on delivering more cores vs threads (multi-core, dual and now quad) along with many of the energy efficiency capabilities previously only available in mobile processors. The result was much better performance and power efficiency (perf/watt) for threaded environments generation to generation.

Hyper-threading still exists in our high end Itanium product line and Intel plans to bring a Hyper-threading like feature back in future versions of Xeon .