FreeBSD 6.0 compat with DL320 G4

[No at SPAM at mgEDV.net]

> Our vendor preference is HP, if anyone could share their experience
> with the following products (in regards of network/sata support and
> anything else mentioning):
>
> HP DL140 G2
> HP DL145 G2
> HP DL320 G4
> HP DL360 G4

we tried dl320 g2, g3, g4, dl380 g3 with sata/ciss drives,
1-4gb ram, P4/XEON, DUAL-XEON with freebsd 5 and 6.
as of the *bsd's, freebsd has the best support for the
hp DL*s. sata support is not given for all embedded raid-
controllers but you can still use raid 1 functionality
using raidctl. hdd failures can render the system hang for
3-5sec's on sata devices but after this timeout, everything's
fine. rebuild is sometimes only possible by os-command, pluggin'
in the new drive is sometimes not enough ;-)

nw/chipset support is working (at least on all machines we use).
no performance issues, except you configure as router and you use
many different irq's for all interfaces (only occurred on a machine
with 8 interfaces).

thermal zone / ipmi support is not really
close to the vendors ideas and sometimes produces wrong
numbers, but if you don't want to set fan-speed or check
temp. on all mentioned devices, it's fine.

also, system management like (red-power fail, red-fan fail, etc...)
is not really talking to the os and vice versa, therefore you'll
have to check for errors like this on your own.

furthermore, bios/fw upgrades can sometimes be really annoying,
if you don't have usb-boot-support you'd run into troubles because
hp only delivers them for some specific os's and freebsd is not on
the list.

btw. if somebody reads this and thinks: hey, bullshit i know a way
of doing this better and it works fine with my DL, please let me
know!

best regards and good luck w. the hw :-)