experiences with Supermicro Twin servers? (6016TT / 6026TT / 6015TW)

[Louis Kowolowski]

On Apr 30, 2009, at 6:09 AM, Miroslav Lachman wrote:

> Hi all,
> are there somebody with some experiences (bad or good) with  
> Supermicro Twin servers? Mainly with 2U model 6026TT-TF or 1U model  
> 6016TT-TF build on top of Intel 5520 Tylersburg (or any other?)
>
> We would like to buy some Twin servers, but I do not have chance to  
> test it before.
> Are there any know problems with Twin servers generally, or are  
> there any issus with FreeBSD 7.x with used CPU / chipsets / NICs?
>
I own 2 personally, and my employer has 2 also.  I'm pleased with  
them.  Thus far, they've run a year w/o any issues.  They were  
purchased from iX Systems(.com).

Things you should be aware of, at least for the 1U units (I don't have  
the 2U).  FreeBSD 7.0R didn't support booting off USB media.  The IP  
KVM, while it works wonderfully, provides virtual media that show up  
as USB.

They only have 1 PCI-e slot, I filled mine with the IP KVM dedicated  
interface.

Don't use the onboard "RAID"  it's somewhere between unreliable and  
non-functional.  It shows up as either Intel matrix, or Adaptec host  
RAID.

I've been using them with ZFS and gmirror.  Fast, solid, happy.
--
Louis Kowolowski                                louisk at cryptomonkeys.org
Cryptomonkeys:                      http://www.cryptomonkeys.org/~louisk

Making life more interesting for people since 1977