SUPERMICRO SYS-5017C-LF 1U Rackmount Server Barebone LGA 1155 Intel C202 DDR3 1333/1066/800

Pros: 1U, light weight, very quiet, IPMI, dual network ports, RAID support on the motherboard.

Cons: Only 2 USB ports. There are connectors for more on the motherboard, but even adding a PCI bracket with more ports is tricky due to space constraints. I would love to see Supermicro dump the two PS/2 keyboard/mouse ports and replace them with at least two more USB ports.

Out of the box, the system only supports 1 3.5" device internally. It does allow for two brackets that hold 2 2.5" devices each, allowing for up to 4 internal devices. But these brackets are not included (search for part number MCP-220-00044-0N if you need them). You'd think that for a server, even a small one, at least 2 drives would be used and Supermicro would include a bracket by default.

Other Thoughts: We are using two of these as redundant domain controllers in a small environment. We run with 8GB ECC RAM (Kingston KVR1333D3S8E9SK2/4G) and Core i3-2120T processors, plus two hard drives in RAID1. They have been flawless so far.

Pros: 1U, half depth.
Inexpensive.
Win7 install from usb stick was under 5 minutes to the desktop.
System is very simple and easy to set up.

Cons: Could have done a better job with the drive mounting.
Air flow design isn't the greatest.

Other Thoughts: Running this with a E3 1230V2 and 16G ram.
Vsphere 5.
Windows Server 2008R2 and Win7.
180G Intel ssd for running vm's, 500g 2.5" 7200 for additional storage.

Pros: Quiet, Powerful, Compact

Cons: Already mentioned, but RAM is picky. 2nd NIC needs help under ESXi 5.1 (see note below).

Other Thoughts: This RAM works: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239133

This is the ESXi 5.1 NIC fix:
http://virtual-drive.in/2012/11/16/enabling-intel-nic-82579lm-on-intel-s1200bt-under-esxi-5-1/

Pros: Compact, not heavy, loud or hot, has IPMI, supports ECC memory

Cons: very limited selection of CPUs and memory.

Uninformative manual, the shroud mentioned in the manual (page 6-6) to improve airflow is not actually supplied.

Need a special bracket to install a second 2.5" disk drive. The part number is MCP-220-00044-ON (not given in the manual). Newegg has this.

The manual does not specify the login or password for the IPMI. Both are "ADMIN" (all caps).

Other Thoughts: There is no list of compatible CPUs on the Supermicro website. We found that an i3-2120T does work. There is no list of compatible memory either. We found that several brands that appeared to meet the requirements of the 5017C listed in the manual did not work. However, the "memory error" beeps (5 short, 1 long - see page A-1) did not occur either, so we were not sure it was a memory problem. Eventually memory from a vendor that allowed us to specify the target motherboard was purchased and functioned.

Pros: Newegg inventory currently has the 2.0 BIOS and full support for the v2 processors. I'm running with the XEON E3 1230V2 3.3G 4CHT. Holds up to 32gb RAM.

Easy to build and setup. IPMI works great. Small footprint. Runs pretty cool.

Cons: You need a bracket to mount a 2.5" drive which is not included. (I hacked it for now and just put in a single screw to hold the 2.5" drive.

It appears that the eth0 and eth1 ports are flipped from the description in the manual.

Initial power on boot time somewhat slow due to IPMI initialization; I think you can disable the wait for that in the BIOS settings.

Other Thoughts: You need ram with hylinx chips. N82E16820239133 Kingston 4GB KVR13E9/4HC works great, best performance if you install 2 at a time.

Pros: Supermicro tends to be decent quality. Haven't spent a ton of time on this server but it seems up to par with their other models. Good price for what it offers.

Cons: If your server ships with BIOS 1.1a, don't bother wasting any time to flash it to 2.0. ESXi 5.0 wouldn't recognize the Intel card (Intel E1G44HT) I installed (which is confirmed compatible with ESXi 5.0). Once I flashed the BIOS to 2.0, everything worked great.

1.1a is simply buggy from what I can tell. 2.0 resolves a number of issues. Not sure why Supermicro doesn't have this documented. I had to figure this out on my own even though I reached out to them for support. Perhaps my e-mail to them will force them to document this issue (as it's extremely frustrating not having a usable PCI-e interface with ESXi).

Also worthy of noting, only 1 of the 2 on-board Intel NICs will be recognized with ESXi 5.0. Haven't bothered exploring drivers yet, but at first glance this is truly the case (supermicro was already aware of this particular issue).

Other Thoughts: Time will tell how reliable this particular motherboard turns out to be.

Pros: I bought it for it's small size (1U, half length) and IPMI interface (which rocks).

Cons: Dead On Arrival. Does not beep or show VGA when I turn it on. IPMI works, but doesn't tell me what's wrong, other than that the last POST code was 22, which is documented nowhere. If I remove the memory, it correctly does 5 short 1 long beeps as documented, but that's the only reaction I can get from the system

Pros: we use these as our Tier 2 firewalls and SSL VPNs, as well as our Tier 1 VMware boxes. superfast and stable when combined with Xeon E3-1240 cpu and name brand ECC unbuffered ram and a good SLC SSD.

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: we would like to see this chassis with the higher end E5 series Xeons and 256GB of ram

Pros: The IMIP is very useful, with email alerts and IKVM. I have installed Intel Xeon E3-1220 with 16 gb Kingston, 120GB SSD, and 1TB Hard Drive. The server runs fast, cold and stable. the 2 1GB network adapters are a great plus!

Cons: Can only fit 1 full size drive internally. Is very picky with ram, I had to order ram listed on the supermicro website. Ram with the same specs did not work :(

Pros: Small Powerful room for expansion

Cons: very few available processors as mentioned i had to special order mine from a company luckily they could get it :D

Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1260L
(8M Cache, 2.40 GHz)

Other Thoughts: looks great my first server build ever

also it says 1 3.5" hdd or 2 2.5" hdds
it should reflect 2 x2 brackets meaning a possible 4 2.5" hdd just to clear it up for you :D