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

[Miroslav Lachman]

Louis Kowolowski wrote:

> 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).

Can you please post the model number of your servers?

> 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.

7.0 booted well from USB media on my Sun Fire X2100 M2 servers, but I 
know there were (are) problems with booting FreeBSD on some 
motherboards. I have problems with 7.0 on HP ML110 G5. 7.1 is booting OK 
on this HP ML110 G5. Did you try booting some newer versions on your 
servers?

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

Do you have any other issues with IPMI + KVM as posted by Andrew Snow?

> 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.

Same here, I have gmirror on all those entry level servers and I am 
testing ZFS on one of them.

Thank you for your advice.

Miroslav Lachman