hardware for home use large storage

Jeremy Chadwick freebsd at jdc.parodius.com
Tue Feb 9 13:44:58 UTC 2010


On Tue, Feb 09, 2010 at 06:53:26AM -0600, Karl Denninger wrote:
> Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 09, 2010 at 05:21:32PM +1100, Andrew Snow wrote:
> >   
> >> http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/ICH9/X7SPA.cfm?typ=H
> >>
> >> Supermicro just released a new Mini-ITX fanless Atom server board
> >> with 6xSATA ports (based on Intel ICH9) and a PCIe 16x slot.  It
> >> takes up to 4GB of RAM, and there's even a version with KVM-over-LAN
> >> for headless operation and remote management.
> >>     
> >
> > Neat hardware.  But with regards to the KVM-over-LAN stuff: it's IPMI,
> > and Supermicro has a very, *very* long history of having shoddy IPMI
> > support.  I've been told the latter by too many different individuals in
> > the industry (some co-workers, some work at Yahoo, some at Rackable,
> > etc.) for me to rely on it.  If you *have* to go this route, make sure
> > you get the IPMI module which has its own dedicated LAN port on the
> > module and ***does not*** piggyback on top of an existing LAN port on
> > the mainboard.
> >   
> What's wrong with the Supermicro IPMI implementations?  I have several -
> all have a SEPARATE LAN port on the main board for the IPMI KVM
> (separate and distinct from the board's primary LAN ports), and I've not
> had any trouble with any of them.

http://unix.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/FreeBSD/current/2008-01/msg01206.html
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=7750
http://www.beowulf.org/archive/2007-November/019925.html
http://bivald.com/lessons-learned/2009/06/supermicro_ipmi_problems_web_i.html
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2008-August/044248.html
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2008-August/044237.html

(Last thread piece does mention that the user was able to get keyboard
working by disabling umass(4) of all things)

It gets worse when you use one of the IPMI modules that piggybacks on an
existing Ethernet port -- the NIC driver for the OS, from the ground up,
has to be fully aware of ASF and any quirks/oddities involved.  For
example, on bge(4) and bce(4), you'll find this (bge mentioned below):

  hw.bge.allow_asf
        Allow the ASF feature for cooperating with IPMI.  Can cause sys-
        tem lockup problems on a small number of systems.  Disabled by
        default.

So unless the administrator intentionally sets the loader tunable prior
to booting the OS installation, they'll find all kinds of MAC problems
as a result of the IPMI piggybacking.  "Why isn't this enabled by
default?"  I believe because there were reports of failures/problems on
people's systems who *did not* have IPMI cards.  Lose-lose situation.

If you really want me to dig up people at Yahoo who have dealt with IPMI
on thousands of Supermicro servers and the insanity involved (due to
bugs, quirks, or implementation differences between the IPMI firmwares
and which revision/model of module used), I can do so.  Most of the
complaints I've heard of stem from serial-over-IPMI.  I don't think
it'd be a very positive/"supportive" thread, however.  :-)

One similar product that does seem to work well is iLO, available on
HP/Compaq hardware.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |



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