HomeLab Part 9: Gigabyte BRIX s – A new challenger (in 2017)
I have this post now more than two years in my drafts and it will be really outdated after publishing but still I had to release it! My homelab needed some extension in form of vSAN All-Flash and I don’t wanted to do a nested environment. The main use case for this decision was that I wanted to play with vSAN but also have some physical hardware where I can run some stuff. I went through all the possibilities like using Intel NUC or SuperMicro E200/E300. In the end I decided to use the Gigabyte BRIX s boxes. I never saw such boxes in other homelab configurations and compared to the Intel NUC they have 1 major benefit. They have already a second NIC onboard. So there is no need to buy an external USB3/Thunderbolt NIC and hope that all drivers will work.
Hardware
In more detail I decided to use the GB-BSi3HAL-6100 version of the Gigabyte BRIX s. In the following table you can see a comparison between the i3/i5 version of this BRIX s as well as the Intel NUC which are using (nearly) the same i3/i5 6th generation processor.
| Gigabyte GB-BSi3HAL-6100 | Gigabyte GB-BSi5HAL-6200 | Intel NUC6i3SYH | NUC6i5SYH | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dimension H x W x D | 46.8 x 112.6 x 119.4 (mm) | 46.8 x 112.6 x 119.4 (mm) | 48 x 111 x 115 (mm) | 48 x 111 x 115 (mm) |
| Architecture | Skylake (14nm) | Skylake (14nm) | Skylake (14nm) | Skylake (14nm) |
| CPU | Intel Core i3-6100U | Intel Core i5-6200U | Intel Core i3-6100U | Intel Core i5-6260U |
| CPU Frequency (GHz) (Base / TurboBoost) | 2.3 | 2.3 / 2.8 | 2.3 | 1.9 / 2.8 |
| Cores / HT | 2 / 4 | |||
| TDP | 15W | |||
| Memory | 2x 260-pin 1.2V DDR4 2133 MHz SO-DIMM | |||
| Max Memory | 32GB | |||
| LAN | Intel Gigabit I219LM Intel Gigabit I210AT | Intel Gigabit I219LM Intel Gigabit I210AT | Intel Gigabit I219V | Intel Gigabit I219V |
| Wireless LAN | Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BT 4.2 | Intel Wireless-AC 8260 + BT 4.2 | ||
| Graphics | Intel HD Graphics 520 | Intel® Iris Graphics 540 | ||
| Audio | Realtek ALC255 | Realtek ALC283 | ||
| Front I/O | 1 x USB 3.1 type C 1 x USB3.1 1 x head phone jack with MIC | 2x USB 3.0 1x head phone jack 1x infrared sensor |
||
| Rear I/O | 1 x HDMI (1.4a) 1 x Mini DisplayPort (1.2) 2 x USB 3.0 1 x RJ45 1 x DC-In 1 x Kensington lock slot | 1 x HDMI (1.4b) 1 x Mini DisplayPort (1.2) 2 x USB 3.0 1 x RJ45 1 x DC-In |
||
| Side I/O | 1x Intel i210AT | 1x SDXC slot (UHS-I support) 1 x Kensington lock slot |
||
| Price (Dec. 2017) | 335€ | 429€ | 321€ | 371€ |
| Source: www.gigabyte.com, www.intel.com | ||||
CPU
From a CPU perspective the only differences between the 3 CPUs is that the i5 processors have TurboBoost and the NUC i5 processor has more L3/4 cache. From a performance (PassMark) perspective you need to evaluate if the slightly better performance is worth the additional money. For the BRIX s boxes it’s about roughly 100€ more.
| Intel Core i3-6100U | Intel Core i5-6200U | Intel Core i5-6260U | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU features | |||
| Architecture | Skylake (14nm) | ||
| Frequency (MHz) | 2300 | 1800 | |
| Turbo Frequency (Mhz) | 2800 2700 | 2900 2700 |
|
| Passmark | 3571 | 4009 | 4374 |
| L1 Cache | 64KB (Code) 64KB (data) |
||
| L2 Cache | 512KB | ||
| L3 Cache | 3MB | 4MB | |
| L4 Cache | - | - | 64MB |
| TDP (Watt) | 15 | ||
| Cores | 2 | ||
| Threads | 4 | ||
| Instruction set extensions | |||
| AES | + | ||
| AMD64 / EM64T | + | ||
| AVX | + | ||
| AVX 2.0 | + | ||
| F16C | + | ||
| FMA3 | + | ||
| MMX | + | ||
| SSE | + | ||
| SSE2 | + | ||
| SSE3 | + | ||
| SSE4.1 | + | ||
| SSE4.2 | + | ||
| SSSE3 | + | ||
| TSX | + | ||
| Supported technologies | |||
| Hyper-Threading | + | ||
| PowerNow! / Enhanced SpeedStep | + | ||
| Turbo Boost | - | + | |
| Virtualization | + | ||
| Virus Protection / NX bit | + | ||
| Source: www.cpu-world.com | |||
Network card
| i219-LM | i219-V | i210-AT | i210-AS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Code Name | Jacksonville | Springville | ||
| Launch Date | Q2/15 | Q4/12 | ||
| # of Ports | 1 | |||
| Speed | 1Gbps | |||
| Jumbo Frames supported | Yes | |||
| 1000Base-T | Yes | - | ||
| SGMII Interface | No | Yes | ||
| SERDES Interface | No | Yes | ||
| Supported under vPro | Yes | No | ||
| Source: www.intel.com, for more information see here. | ||||
VMware HCL
From a VMware HCL perspective this small unit is of course not supported nor certified to run ESXi, but parts of the BRIX are supported with ESXi 6.x. When searching for the VID and DID auf the I219 (8086:156f) and I210 (8086:1533) network card you will find that these cards are supported. In the past it was always a lottery if the barebone NICs are working or not but with an entry in the HCL the chances are good that it will work.
I219
I210
Summary
Unfortunately this post will be irrelevant for most homelabs nowadays because you can’t get this sort of Gigabyte BRIX anymore. All newer versions like the 7th or 8th Gen versions only have one NIC now. I’m running a 3 node cluster now for more than 2 years and I had only 2 problems so far:
- vSAN Memory consumption according to KB2113954. In my case this is approx. 10GB (using 250GB SSD cache) and with only 32GB per host memory is running out very quick.
- Used USB sticks dies quickly (after 1 year).
For the second problem my solution was to backup the ESXi configuration with a PowerCLI cmdlet which can be found in KB2042141. You can create a Powershell script which runs every day to backup the most recent version of the configuration. In case one of the USB drives fail you can reinstall the ESXi host and restore the saved configuration.