Does FreeBSD 10 supports ARM well?

[Bernd Walter]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 01:12:43PM +0800, Jingcheng zhang wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> We have a storage system based on FreeBSD 10.  We want to run the system on
> ARM platform.  We know that the FreeBSD support development is in
> progress.   Could some guys help answer the following questions?
> 1)  Does FreeBSD 10 supports ARM?
> 2)  Are the disk and network adapters support ready for ARM?

Well - it really depends on your requirements and system.
ARM systems are very different from each other - there is no single answer.
Same goes for disk and network adapters - they are very different too,
plus you need a board which supports adding adapters.

It is very possible to run FreeBSD ARM with long uptime.
This is a self build board based on Atmel AT91RM9200:
uname -[51]beaver.cicely.de# uname -a
FreeBSD beaver.cicely.de 8.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 8.0-CURRENT #0: Sun Nov 22 07:52:33 CET 2009     ticso at beaver.cicely.de:/mnt2/arm-2009-04-17/head/sys/arm/compile/BEAVER  arm
[52]beaver.cicely.de# uptime
11:57PM  up 1370 days,  2:07, 1 user, load averages: 0.33, 0.14, 0.04

A more modern design with a Wandboard Quad using the Freescale iMX6:
[304]wb1# uname -a
FreeBSD wb1.cicely.de 11.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 11.0-CURRENT #0 r271289M: Tue Sep  9 00:26:36 CEST 2014     ticso at cicely1.cicely.de:/root/crochet-freebsd/work/obj/arm.armv6/home/builder/arm-build/head/sys/IMX6  arm
[305]wb1# cat /
[305]wb1# uptime
 8:55PM  up 13 days, 10:16, 1 user, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

About disk and network adapters - hard to tell, because most ARM boards
are SOC without slots to add anything and most people don't use cards.
USB usually works fine - with all the pros and cons of USB.
Usually the most popular adapters should work if the board has a supported
Slot system.
The iMX6 for example has single port PCI express and single port SATA.
I never tried the SATA and most baords don't have a PCIe slot.
I do own a Fairy board carrier for the Wandboard modules, which has a
mini PCIe slot, but I don't own a card.
But in any case - a different SOC and the iMX6 answers are useless.

-- 
B.Walter <bernd at bwct.de> http://www.bwct.de
Modbus/TCP Ethernet I/O Baugruppen, ARM basierte FreeBSD Rechner uvm.