FreeBSD on Intel Server Board SE7501WV2

[Aaron Wohl]

We have two systems with this motherboard. Id recommend looking for a
different motherboard.  If you find one in the same class let me know
what you find Im looking too for our next set of servers.

-If you touch anything the bios resets to the default boot order.  Its
impossible to keep it from renabling PXE boot on both ethernet cards on a
regular basis.  If one of your interfaces is on a public net anyone
nearby subnet wise can take over your machine with a boot server.  For
years I popped the boot roms out of intel ethernet cards. But now they
are soldered in so you can't make them safe.  I hope your behind a router
if your getting this motherboard.
-If you boot the system without a keyboard attached then latter attach
one the keyboard doesnt work until next boot
-IPMI bios redirect doesnt work for us (lets you fiddle with the bios
settings via IPMI)
-Compatability issues with AMI g2 card remote console.  AMI thought it
was compatability problems with the bios
-Lockups on reboot
-Reset button doesnt work sometimes
-IPMI reset doesnt work sometimes (IPMI power off then on usualy works
ok)
-If using serial bios redirection reset/reboot doesnt fix the baudrate to
what the bios settings are
-Intel IPMI client doesnt work over an IPSEC tunnel
-Intel has a list of certified boards to use in this server.  If there is
a problem they will only help fix it if you use only these cards
-USB cdroms show up as a bootable device but cant be booted.  We tried a
bunch from compusa and it wont boot off of USB
-The 2U chassis we have it in only really has 3 accessible slots for PCI
if the cards have connectors.  It uses risers where each riser has its
own PCI buss segment.  We have an adaptec raid controller on one segment.
 That leaves two PCI slots, one of which the machines wont power up if we
have a card in that 2nd slot.  Make sure if you get one of these that it
comes with all the cards you ever want to put in it and the cards
working.

Hyperthreading works ok
The dual gigabit nics work ok.  The ping timeing is a bit wierd (slow on
gigabit) dont know why yet, but transfer rate seemed ok.  It shows up as
em0 and em1.  You just need "device em" in your kernel config for it to
work right.

I havent tried fiber yet.

On Thu, 11 Sep 2003 13:36:35 -0400 (EDT), "Yaoping Ruan"
<yruan at CS.Princeton.EDU> said:
> Hello,
> 
> We plan to install FreeBSD on an Intel Server Board SE7501WV2 with 1 XEON
> 2.4GHz CPU, 4GB PC2100 DDR memory, and a Seagate 120GB ATA 7200RPM
> harddisk, and use the server box for high demand SpecWeb99 tests. Does
> anyone have any experience on this Server Board, and see any
> compatibility
> problem here? The reason I am asking is that we had some kernel
> compatibility issues on other Intel Board.
> 
> An other question about this box is the two on-board Gigabit Network
> Controller. Do they work fine on FreeBSD? May I use fiber Giganet NCI
> like
> Netgear GA621 on it?
> 
> Any thoughts/information are welcome.
> 
> Thanks a lot
> 
> - Yaoping Ruan
> *********************
> Computer Science Dept.
> Princeton University
> *********************
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