Haswell Support

[oshortkid]

Hi all,

I am looking to build a new NAS server with the following parts

Supermicro X10SLM-F
Intel Xeon e1230v3

Does anybody know if this new board/chip is supported or when will it be supported? Thanks!

 

[cyberjock]

It will likely work "out of the box" since its an x86 chip. Newer features probably won't work and will be the responsibility of the FreeBSD team to work on(not FreeNAS, although some developers may be working on both projects). Only after support is implemented there can you expect the support to trickle down into this project.

 

[oshortkid]

Thks cyberjock, appreciate your reply. When you mean features that are not available, is it possible to list some? Also, do you happen to know about thw compatibilit of the intel i217LM and i210AT Gbe controller?

 

[cyberjock]

What I mean is if there are new instruction sets(for example, MMX, AES-NI, SSE), new features for power management, or other specific design changes that require software to make them work properly.

As for the Gb controllers Intel is pretty much the leader in LAN drivers for FreeBSD, so I'd fully expect them to be supported in FreeBSD/FreeNAS if the standard driver doesn't work already.

 

[jgreco]

I would expect the network NOT to work on anything that is based on FreeBSD prior to 9.1.

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.1R/relnotes.html

These are apparently handled by the igb(4) driver. 8.3 manpage lists this driver as handling the 82575/576 only.

It appears that the i217 is a new variation on the traditional "em". I base this on what little information I can see at https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=17509 which says

FreeBSD* base driver for the Intel® Gigabit family of adapters, EXCEPT FOR 82575/6, 82580, I210/1, and I350-based gigabit network connections. This driver has been developed for use with FreeBSD* with the 9.x kernel.

If you have an 82575, 82576, 82580, I210/1, or I350-based network connection you will need the "igb-x.x.x.tar.gz" FreeBSD* driver.

My uninformed but based on lots of past experience opinion is that we won't see built-in support for this until 9.2 - at least - but you can probably build the driver module and drop it into FreeNAS 9.1 and have total awesomeness for low power, high performance modern ethernet, with only a modest risk that it won't be possible to get it to work.

 

[oshortkid]

I see, i am a little confused now. Freenas 8.3 is based on freebsd 8.3 yeah? And 9.1 respectively as well. But 9.1 is still in beta testing right? Actually come to the worse i could just buya supported pcie ethernet card to use it as well right?

 

[jgreco]

I see, i am a little confused now. Freenas 8.3 is based on freebsd 8.3 yeah? And 9.1 respectively as well. But 9.1 is still in beta testing right?

FreeNAS 9 is expected to be released "soon". Hardware support for the latest hardware tends to lag a little in FreeBSD and FreeNAS, because first there needs to be a FreeBSD release that supports it, and FreeNAS releases after that, so it can sometimes take a little while.

Actually come to the worse i could just buya supported pcie ethernet card to use it as well right?

Presumably, as long as that's all that doesn't work.

 

[cyberjock]

Freenas 8.3 is based on freebsd 8.3 yeah?

Yep.

And 9.1 respectively as well. But 9.1 is still in beta testing right?

FreeBSD 9.1 is officially out, but FreeNAS 9.1 is in alpha testing.

Actually come to the worse i could just buya supported pcie ethernet card to use it as well right?

Yep. Unless there was something new about the CPU that made FreeBSD 9.1 unbootable(very very unlikely).

 

[jgreco]

FreeBSD 9.1 is officially out, but FreeNAS 9.1 is in alpha testing.

Oh, and that was the other point. Since FBSD 9.1 is released, FreeNAS is expected to be based off that. Looking at the "em" driver on FreeBSD 9.1, the man page lists a slew of 825* chips that are supported but not the i2xx. The e1000 log seems to show it was imported in Feb, well after the Dec 2012 release of 9.1.

 

[oshortkid]

Hey guys, many thanks for your inputs. It has been very informative for a noob like me:) i guess i will proceed with the new hardware and probably try to compile and load the new drivers to see if it works. Else i will have to shell out another 35 bucks to buy a compatible ethernet card.

On a side note, its weird how i am paying significantly lesser for a haswell board as compared to an ivybridge variant.

 

[jgreco]

Really? Because $151 for the 1155 boards is kind of hard to beat for a server-grade board. What'd you find it for?

 

[oshortkid]

Really? Because $151 for the 1155 boards is kind of hard to beat for a server-grade board. What'd you find it for?

That is a nice price. For a start, i dont live in the US. In the country that i live in, we dont have nice online stores like amazon nor newegg that gives good prices and we get slightly marked up prices.

For the x9scm-f in my country, we are looking at about 220USD.

For the x10Slm-f it is about 185USD.

The prices above are with shipping and taxes. Based on the link you posted, the total with shipping and taxes should come up to about 180USD i guess?

To me the x10slm-f is a steal there and a plus point is that regular warranty for supermicro now is 1 years parts and 3 years labour. I am getting 3years full parts warranty so i guess that pretty makes up for the premium i am paying in my country!

 

[jgreco]

Yeah, wow, that's a severe premium for the X9SCM. You might want to troll around and see if you can find another suitable X9S board like the X9SCL or X9SCL+.

 

[dantest69]

Hi oshortkid, did you end up going with the X10 in the end? If so, any issues running FreeNAS 9.1 or any issues with the Intel NICs?

I'm in a nearly identical situation as you: X10s are much cheaper than the X9s in my country but there are basically zero reviews that I could find on them, particularly the X10SLL-*.

Thanks!

That is a nice price. For a start, i dont live in the US. In the country that i live in, we dont have nice online stores like amazon nor newegg that gives good prices and we get slightly marked up prices.

For the x9scm-f in my country, we are looking at about 220USD.

For the x10Slm-f it is about 185USD.

The prices above are with shipping and taxes. Based on the link you posted, the total with shipping and taxes should come up to about 180USD i guess?

To me the x10slm-f is a steal there and a plus point is that regular warranty for supermicro now is 1 years parts and 3 years labour. I am getting 3years full parts warranty so i guess that pretty makes up for the premium i am paying in my country!

 

[raidflex]

I am wondering the outcome also. I am in the same boat and it would cost me about $60 more to go to Haswell or I may just stick with the Ivy Bridge Xeon. There seems to be about a 10W difference in idle power from a Xeon E3 1230v2 to a E3 1230v3. I also do not want to have any compatibility issues with Freenas 9.1. I already have to sell my E2 1225V2 as I will not need the on-board video, with the Supermicro board. I plan to run Plex among many other plugins on mine, so I want the performance boost with the 1230 vs 1225.

 

[oshortkid]

Hi apologies for the late reply as i was travelling. Yes the current freenas build worked fine for me. Both lan ports are working well and I get very good speeds with them. I am not sure why for some reason during the 1st boot up, it pops an error. Had to keep restarting it till the error 'cleared'. Seems like there were others who experienced it as well. But since then the problem has not surfaced. Hope that helps!

 

[vegaman]

Hi apologies for the late reply as i was travelling. Yes the current freenas build worked fine for me. Both lan ports are working well and I get very good speeds with them. I am not sure why for some reason during the 1st boot up, it pops an error. Had to keep restarting it till the error 'cleared'. Seems like there were others who experienced it as well. But since then the problem has not surfaced. Hope that helps!

That sounds similar to Xiche's issue he mentioned in the SuperMicro X10 series thread. Disabling XHCI solved it apparently. I'd rather not lose USB3 though.
Have you rebooted since without issues?

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 4

 

[raidflex]

This is good to hear. I bet support will be even better when Freenas 9.2 is out.