ASUS Board with "everything" onbord (SAS, 10G)

[mka]

I recently stumbled about a mainboard which seems to be ideal equipped for a private high performance storage server.

ASUS P9D-MH SAS 10G DUAL
http://www.asus.com/Commercial_Servers_Workstations/P9DMHSAS10GDUAL/

It's a µATX Intel Haswell Xeon Board with ECC Ram and 14 ports (8 SAS, 6 SATA) featuring two 10G Ethernet Ports. I was wondering if anybody did use this Board with FreeNAS or knows if its supporting the devices (mainly LSI SAS 2308 SAS Controller and Dual port Broadcom 10GbE NIC).

Considering the equipped hardware it's reasonably priced (<400€). Thanks!

 

[Ericloewe]

It's a proceed at your own risk kind of thing.

Broadcom 10GbE has been less than reliable with FreeNAS/FreeBSD. LSI SAS 2308 shouldn't be a problem.

Other, lesser components are more of a mystery. If you go ahead with this, tell us how it went.

I do remember Asus being significantly more expensive than Supermicro, though, so keep that in mind.

 

[mka]

Thanks. I will probably wait some time... a system update to 10G is not that urgent. But currently it's the only server board with this kind of setup (µATX,Haswell,ECC,10G,>10 Ports)

 

[Ericloewe]

You can always add an Intel 10GbE NIC to an X10SL7-F or go with one of the Xeon E5 v3 boards (at least one of them has an LSI SAS 3008 and dual 10GbE, IIRC).

 

[cyberjock]

I personally wouldn't get that board. Partly because its ASUS and a few people are already pissed at them for poor support of BIOS features (as a result some users can't use 9.3 on their system and there's nothing anyone can do about it). Partly because Broadcom may or may not work. You might say the price is right, but if the hardware won't work you'll eat into that good price just trying to get the right stuff.

I'd recommend you get a Supermicro board and go that route before ASUS, even if it costs a little more. It will virtually be guaranteed to work while the ASUS is anyone's guess.

 

[titan_rw]

Honestly the Supermicro X9SRH-7TF is a better bet. Regardless of price, and I don't know how much the Asus one costs, I'd rather have the supermicro one. Intel 10GBE that gets me 800 MB/sec vs a Broadcom on the Asus? Both have LSI SAS controllers. The supermicro board is proven to work well with BSD, and FreeNAS specifically. Supermicro's also been doing server stuff for a LOT longer than Asus. And I do have an Asus board in my desktop, but I wouldn't ever think of them for server boards.

Edit: And it's Xeon E3, and SFP+? With 10GBE, I think the 32 gig ram limit of an e3 would be more likely to be an issue. And you can get Intel 10GBE SFP+ Nic's for not that much. It's the 10GBase-T twisted pair nics that are more expensive.