Building a Home Lab Server in 2022

· 12 min read
HardwareHomeLabServer

The Journey Begins

I had a problem with the mainboard Supermicro H12SSL-NT and replaced it with ASRock ROME8D-T2. At first, I realized BMC/IPMI was not working, it was neither accessible through LAN nor the BMC heartbeat LED is working. This is a small problem since I am not using the BMC web interface much but the VGA output was also not working, so the setup is also not accessible.

I tried an external graphics card but it also sometimes worked, sometimes not. I have searched a bit and it seems the BMC is dead. As it was not clear to me if it was working or not, I decided to replace it.

Hardware Decisions

It was not easy to find H12SSL and I want to try something else, so I have purchased ROME8D-T2. I decided the model with Intel X550 networking (-T2).

I have uninstalled everything and reinstalled back to the new mainboard without a big issue. One problem is that I was using 2x M2 NVMe 22110 modules, however the new mainboard supports only one 22110. Rather than buying new 2280 NVMe modules, I decided to use a PCIe M2 Adapter (Asus Hyper M2 PCIe v4) which works fine and boots without an issue.

Comparing Platforms

Comparing to H12SSL, I see a few drawbacks of ROME8D-T2:

  • Only one 22110 M.2 supported. Enterprise modules can have 22110 form factor.
  • The position of 10G network ports is a bit odd. Depending on the computer case, it can be hard to unplug the network cable.
  • The position of panel headers are also a bit odd because they are right angle (in this model, I think there are versions of the mainboard where they are not). This might be an issue in some cases, luckily it was not a problem for me.

Conclusion

Overall, the replacement went smoothly and the new board is working well with the PCIe adapter solution for the M.2 drives.