BL460 G6 support

[Christoph Weber-Fahr]

Hello,

Ross West wrote:
> CWF> Does anybody know if there FreeBSD support forthcoming for the
> CWF> current BL460 generation, or has FreeBSD written off HPs blade
> CWF> server as insignificant?
> 
> I'm currently running FreeBSD 7/8 on BL460 (G1) right now - Using the
> Qlogic fiber channel cards + the NC373i gigabit cards. Works with
> generic kernel on 8.0 nicely.

Thanks for your reply - but that is *not* the issue. I have 26 of those.

The problem we (and you, FWIW) have is that the G6 (and the soon-to-come
BL465 G7) have a *different* NIC chip set which is not supported,
and I do not see any movement in this matter. The G6 has been out
for nearly a year now, G1s are not on the market any more, so thats
a major problem.

Oh, and evcn if there is a supported mezzanine card this wouldn't
help either, since mezzanine cards can not connect to the switch
the embedded cards are on, so I can not use those to expand existing
centers (without purchasing new switches).

> If you mean official HP support - then you're asking the wrong place,
> as it's up the HP, not Freebsd. And last I heard HP isn't offering
> official support for BSD any time soon, only Redhat + SLES Linux.

Correct.

> I don't believe Freebsd offers official support for any platform.
> There are probably consulting places that will gladly help out though!

Nope. This is not about "official support" - this is about "do we
consider this server platform important enough to make sure there
are the necessary drivers for it". And the ridicule and schoolmasterly
rebuffs people get when asking about this seem to imply otherwise.
(just google the issue and read the handful or so threads
on the topic. Apparently, this isn't even considered a problem.

> There was someone who has written a driver for the NC532i (broadcom
> 57711 10Ge chipset that comes with the BL460-G6) but wanted to do
> more testing - see:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/freebsd-net@freebsd.org/msg30514.html

Yes, I know that thread. David Christensen of Broadcom. I contacted
him in August 2009 and offered help, but he didn't need any more
testers.  I also took up on his suggestion to escalate this issue
via our HP key account mananger, but apparently that didn't do
any good either.

Since then, he stopped answering my emails.

After 6 months, this seems to be a dead end.

Regards

Christoph Weber-Fahr