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First look at the new Supermicro E302-12D (Ice Lake D)

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The Intel Xeon D embedded SoC product line is an amazing platform and has been extremely popular amongst VMware customers for VMware Homelabs and running workloads both in the Datacenter and at the Edge using kits like the Supermicro E200-8D and E300-9D to just name a few. While the E200-8D/E300-9D still remain popular, they are slowly coming up on their end of life support, Q1 2023 and Q1 2025 respectively.

Intel Ice Lake D is the first major architectural refresh of the Intel Xeon D product line, which is quite exciting for those looking to upgrade and take advantage of all the latest hardware capabilities this new platform as to offer! Two Ice Lake D kits that I am really excited for is the Supermicro E300-12D and E302-12D, both of which leverage the new Ice Lake D SoC. As a E200-8D owner, my only real nit pick is with the noise of the fans which can sound like a jet engine when using the stock fans. Although I have replaced the stock fans with the much quieter Noctua fans, under higher load the system is still audible and some in the community have also reported that it may still not be enough to cool system.

If I had to start all over again, I certainly would be looking at one of the new fanless kit from Supermicro! I was fortunate enough to get my hands on the upcoming Supermicro E302-12D system, a fanless Ice Lake D kit which has a similiar design to the existing E300-9D.

So here is your first sneak peak at this new Ice Lake D platform! 😀

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First look at the Supermicro E100-12T

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I first came to learn about Supermicro's E100-9W platform last year, which I had first written about here. The E100-9W is a fanless kit that is part of Supermicro's Embedded IoT family and targets similiar use cases to the Intel NUC such as Industrial Automation, Retail, Smart Medical Systems, Kiosks and Digital Signage. Although the E100-9W was just released in 2020, it was actually using a much older Intel 8th Generation CPU due to some constraints with Intel's embedded CPU roadmap.

Supermicro did mention last year that a Tiger Lake-based model was in the works and last week, I just got my hands on a pre-production unit for their 2nd generation of this platform called the E100-12T.

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Supermicro 2021 Homelab Group Buy

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After many months of planning and discussions, today I am excited to share the Supermicro 2021 Homelab Group Buy with the VMware Community! 🥳

A big thanks to both Supermicro and the Aspen Systems team for supporting this community initiative.

Details

This group buy is for a barebones (includes CPU) Supermicro E300-9D-8CN-8TP, which is a very capable platform for running your VMware Homelab which I have previously written about here and here. As a successor to the popular E200-8D, another benefit of the E300-9D is that it is officially listed on the VMware HCL and is supported with the latest vSphere 7.0 Update 2 release.

Since this is the first time we are partnering up with both Supermicro and Aspen Systems for a group buy, we wanted to keep the program simple and initially focus on US based users. If this group buy is successful, we will work with the team to run a similar group buy for other regions such as EMEA/APJ. For this group buy, we have been able to secure a 20% discount for the VMware Community and does require a minimum quantity of 300 units to be purchased to qualify for the discounted rate. If you are interested in participating in this group buy, please visit the URL below. In addition, I will also periodically update this blog post with the latest numbers, so folks have an idea of the overall progress.

Lastly, please help get the word out by sharing this blog post with your friends, colleagues and social network!

UPDATE 3 (07/07/21) – Unfortunately, we did not meet the minimum requirements based on the final results and this group buy will NOT be proceeding. I have no plans to re-attempt this and/or future group buys as this was a non-trivial amount of work.

I also have no plans to re-attempt this for other regions, this was a non-trivial amount of work on my end and although there was a lot of "interests" from the community, it did not actually translate to folks committing. Sorry to disappoint folks who wanted this to go through, it seems the community has spoken

UPDATE 2 (06/03/21) – Shipping estimates have changed to ~12-14 weeks due to current global shortages. Group buy website has also been updated to reflect units sold, which will happen at the end of each business day.

UPDATE 1 (06/02/21) – Quantity per customer has been increased to 4

Details Description
Minimum Quantity 300
Unit Cost $1350 (includes taxes and fees)
Shipping Cost Calculated based on destination
Shipping Time ~12-14 weeks
Start Date June 2 2021
End Date July 5 2021
Group Buy URL http://vmwa.re/supermicro-2021-groupbuy