redux: 48 or 96 sata3 paths ... specific ZFS hardware proposal

[Daniel Kalchev]

On Sep 23, 2011, at 01:11 , Jason Usher wrote:

> You are saying I want the IR, yes ?
> 

You want IT firmware. You also need to follow exactly the procedure to update the firmware and you also should use the Supermicro provided software. In particular, pay attention to write down the original SAS addresses.

> 
>> - If memory serves, the way the PCIe bandwidth works on
>> that board is
>> that slots 1-3 go to CPU1's interface and slots 4-7 go to
>> CPU2.
> 
> 
> So, if I add four LSI cards, I should probably put two of them on slots 1,2 and the other two on 4,5 ... yes ?

You also need to make sure you have two processors. In you only have one, then ports 4-7 will get routed to the first CPU, via the same QPI link to the hub chipset.

You also need to make sure RAM is evenly populated for both CPUs, but this should already be in the motherboard's documentation.

It is somewhat unclear how good current FreeBSD handles NUMA and similar architecture… At worst, you will end up with just the capacity of one QPI link to the peripherals.

Daniel