SuperMicro X10SL7-F

[Sir.Robin]

So far so good. No issues at all. Been running it since october 2013. But i do replicate to secondary too.

Only problem i had was the IPMI not showing CPU temp after a BIOS flash... but i got it sorted.

Other than that the board is rock solid and i have no other "issues". :)

 

[evident]

So far so good. No issues at all. Been running it since october 2013. But i do replicate to secondary too.

Only problem i had was the IPMI not showing CPU temp after a BIOS flash... but i got it sorted.

Other than that the board is rock solid and i have no other "issues". :)

How did you get temperature information after the BIOS flash? everything is showing up as N/A for me. i'm not even sure if you can view that info in the BIOS either.'
Thanks

 

[Benny Mac]

Hello evident. I had problems with the sensors reading for my new X10SL7-F. The good news is that after some to-and-fro with Supermicro support I got it resolved. It still feels a bit unexplained to me, but now that it's all working I'm happy enough. Here's a summary.

• Installed the new board. All temperatures were showing N/A
• Updated bios and ipmi firmware. This didn't help.
• Ran ipmicfg.exe -fd to reset the ipmi configuration. This brought in some temperatures, but CPU and PCH were still N/A
• Contacted Supermicro support. They had me upgrade to an unreleased version of ipmi firmware. This partially helped. CPU and PCH temperatures would appear on the first value, but on subsequent updates (e.g. after 60s) they'd revert to N/A
• Next, Supermicro support had me reflash the same bios version as I was already using. I did that, and all temperatures went back to showing N/A again.
• So I ran ipmicfg.exe -fd and ... all temperatures came in properly, on initial values and subsequent updates.

I wrote back to the support guy to say thanks and to ask his opinion as to what caused the problem and if it was common or not. Unfortunately I didn't hear anything back from him. My own impression is this problem isn't common, but neither is it unheard of. When I googled it I found a fair few people describing similar symptoms.
Good luck getting your board working. Oh, and you're right, you can't see the temperatures in the bios (despite that page in the manual that suggests you can!)

edit: I forgot to say, that when I reflashed the bios to the same version the Supermicro guy had me do it with the jumper JPME2 set to the "ME" position that allows extra goodness. Yeah, I'm not really sure what it does, but I did it. AND, after updating the bios I had to remove the cmos battery for about 5 minutes. I guess that's more reliable from a support perspective than asking someone to short the terminals for clearing the cmos memory.

 

[Sir.Robin]

Did you both (evident and Benny Mac) see my post from May 15, 2014?

Flash with the JPME jumpers set did the trick for me.

 

[Benny Mac]

Did you both (evident and Benny Mac) see my post from May 15, 2014?

Flash with the JPME jumpers set did the trick for me.

Well reminded, Sir. Robin. I did actually do that too (JPME2 whilst updating the bios). Maybe that was the critical step? I've updated my post above to include that step, plus the removal of the cmos battery.

 

[Sir.Robin]

Right... and i was told to set both JPME1 and JPME2 before BIOS flash. :)

 

[Nick Howard]

I've just purchased this board and I'm waiting on delivery later this week. I struggled finding any of the recommended ram that is listed on SM's compatibility list here in the UK though. I've gone with 2 of the 8gb Kingston KVR16E11/8 sticks and just prey they're OK. It seems a few are running these sticks without issue, so fingers crossed.

 

[Sir.Robin]

2x 8GB Kingston was never a issue. 4x was. However, some are running 4 aswell without issue. 2 will be just fine.

 

[Nick Howard]

2x 8GB Kingston was never a issue. 4x was. However, some are running 4 aswell without issue. 2 will be just fine.

Good to know, thanks. I think 16gb should be enough for my needs anyway but it is good to know others are running 32gb without issue.

 

[darkod]

Hello FreeNAS community.

I am a long time admiror but since my project was only recently approved, I am a fairly new user. Being my first FreeNAS experience I tried to read around for HW recommendations but I was also limited which HW I could get.

Long story short, the machine does not boot OK, sometimes it sees the CF card sometimes not. I understand that this machine will not be rebooted very often but I do not want to put it in production wondering whether the next reboot will make the CF go away. When detected it works perfectly...

I tried google searches and reading so if there is a simple answer to this that I have missed, I am sorry for asking again. :)

Info:
I flashed the board to the 2308 IT ver16 firmware. There were no disks connected while flashing, that was the first thing I did. Seems to worked fine.

The CF-SATA adapter is DeLock 91687. It seemed reputable brand and I have no reason to doubt it. Don't have another adapter to try unless I buy one just for trying.
The CF card was originally Hama Pro 8GB 200x. After the problem persisted I also tried Transcend 8GB 133x which seems much more recommended. Still the same issue.
The board BIOS came with 1.1a. Still haven't tried flashing it to latest oficial 2.0. From some info I found, there was a VGA and storage card fix in 1.1a so if this is related to CF it should already be included in the BIOS it came with.

I have tried connecting the adapter in both the SATA3 and SATA2 ports.
I have tried SATA Mode both IDE and AHCI.

The board still fails to permanently discover the card. It's there, if you reboot few times (often even once), it is not.

I am close to simply installing some small 160GB or 250GB HDD and forget about the CF. But lets see if with your help I can make it work. I would really like to make it work with the CF.

Any advice? Thanks in advance. I appreciate any help.

 

[Ericloewe]

Hello FreeNAS community.

I am a long time admiror but since my project was only recently approved, I am a fairly new user. Being my first FreeNAS experience I tried to read around for HW recommendations but I was also limited which HW I could get.

Long story short, the machine does not boot OK, sometimes it sees the CF card sometimes not. I understand that this machine will not be rebooted very often but I do not want to put it in production wondering whether the next reboot will make the CF go away. When detected it works perfectly...

I tried google searches and reading so if there is a simple answer to this that I have missed, I am sorry for asking again. :)

Info:
I flashed the board to the 2308 IT ver16 firmware. There were no disks connected while flashing, that was the first thing I did. Seems to worked fine.

The CF-SATA adapter is DeLock 91687. It seemed reputable brand and I have no reason to doubt it. Don't have another adapter to try unless I buy one just for trying.
The CF card was originally Hama Pro 8GB 200x. After the problem persisted I also tried Transcend 8GB 133x which seems much more recommended. Still the same issue.
The board BIOS came with 1.1a. Still haven't tried flashing it to latest oficial 2.0. From some info I found, there was a VGA and storage card fix in 1.1a so if this is related to CF it should already be included in the BIOS it came with.

I have tried connecting the adapter in both the SATA3 and SATA2 ports.
I have tried SATA Mode both IDE and AHCI.

The board still fails to permanently discover the card. It's there, if you reboot few times (often even once), it is not.

I am close to simply installing some small 160GB or 250GB HDD and forget about the CF. But lets see if with your help I can make it work. I would really like to make it work with the CF.

Any advice? Thanks in advance. I appreciate any help.

The sister is dubious and the card is from a brand known fur shoddy products. Just use a USB pen drive.

 

[darkod]

The sister is dubious and the card is from a brand known fur shoddy products. Just use a USB pen drive.

I thought the CF is much preferred option. Any suggestions for USB sticks?

Also, does it have a chance to break fairly fast because of RW? I believe I have read the freenas almost does no writing so the stick should last long...

 

[darkod]

Deciding on a usb stick seems even harder since there are plenty around. Would something like the Kingston DTSE9 of 8gb be ok? I read it does warm up a bit but it has metal case for cooling and in a CPD it should be ok.
I was planning to get one for me soon so I can add few more to the order.

Thanks.

 

[Z300M]

Deciding on a usb stick seems even harder since there are plenty around. Would something like the Kingston DTSE9 of 8gb be ok? I read it does warm up a bit but it has metal case for cooling and in a CPD it should be ok.
I was planning to get one for me soon so I can add few more to the order.

Thanks.

I am using a 4GB Transcend CF card connected to an SATA port on my Supermicro motherboard via an adapter whose brand I no longer remember. Everything seems fine. I did try an 8GB Sandisk Cruzer USB drive but couldn't get the machine to boot from it.

 

[darkod]

I am using a 4GB Transcend CF card connected to an SATA port on my Supermicro motherboard via an adapter whose brand I no longer remember. Everything seems fine. I did try an 8GB Sandisk Cruzer USB drive but couldn't get the machine to boot from it.

I know in theory it should work, I tried reading quite a bit when preparing the HW list. In reality, if you look at the images of those CF-SATA adapters most of them have nearly identical PCB, you can see the chips on same positions. I wouldn't be surprised they use the same chipsets etc.

In my case though I can not make it see the card consistently. I don't have another adapter and I would rather try a USB instead of buying one more adapter just to try without being sure it will work. I already did that with the CF card and it didn't help.

As for USB booting I also read somewhere that on this board you need to disable the XHCI option or something like that. I think I would have to do that before trying a USB.

 

[Ericloewe]

In my experience, there are two rules for buying flash drives.

1. Stick to good brands (Kingston, Sandisk, Toshiba, etc.)
2. Don't buy the ultra-small stuff if you can get something bigger. The ultra-small stuff is slooooooowwwww.

As for XHCI, since you'll be getting a USB 2.0 flash drive, the driver used is EHCI (XHCI could in theory be used, but I doubt it's being loaded, since USB 3.0 support is disabled for now in FreeNAS) so you shouldn't have to mess with anything.

 

[darkod]

In my experience, there are two rules for buying flash drives.

1. Stick to good brands (Kingston, Sandisk, Toshiba, etc.)
2. Don't buy the ultra-small stuff if you can get something bigger. The ultra-small stuff is slooooooowwwww.

As for XHCI, since you'll be getting a USB 2.0 flash drive, the driver used is EHCI (XHCI could in theory be used, but I doubt it's being loaded, since USB 3.0 support is disabled for now in FreeNAS) so you shouldn't have to mess with anything.

OK, in order not to waste any money on something that might not work, I decided to try first with couple of sticks I have at home. I have a OCZ Diesel 8GB and Patriot Flex 8GB. I can try it in a few days.

I am still interested why the CF is not working and whether there are any changes in BIOS I could try. Or it's simply a bad combination of board+adapter+card that doesn't play together...

 

[Ericloewe]

OK, in order not to waste any money on something that might not work, I decided to try first with couple of sticks I have at home. I have a OCZ Diesel 8GB and Patriot Flex 8GB. I can try it in a few days.

I am still interested why the CF is not working and whether there are any changes in BIOS I could try. Or it's simply a bad combination of board+adapter+card that doesn't play together...

My guess is that it's the card crapping out in some way. CF-SATA translation is relatively easy because CF is just IDE/PATA, which uses the same command set as SATA.

 

[Sir.Robin]

I'm using SanDisk Cruzer Fit myself. Works on both my SP mobo and Asus/AMD boards.

 

[darkod]

Thanks for all suggestions. I tried the OCZ Diesel 8gb and it seems it works fine. I installed three days ago and have done about 12 reboots and 3 shutdowns and it boots without a single failure. So far so good.

Much better than with the cf card although initially I thought that solution is better.