X11SSM-F and RAID support

[MurrayS]

Hello - Should I be concerned about RAID support on X11SSM-F mobo? The OS Compatibility page on Supermicro site indicates SATA (w/o RAID, AHCI mode) for C236 chipset.

After weeks of researching and reading valuable information about Supermicro boards and memory types and others posted on this site, I finally buckled down and purchased a Supermicro X11SSM-F mobo. Just after placing my purchase I noticed the OS compatibility page. At the same time I see no FreeBSD support from X10 series while so many people have been using these boards.

Appreciate your comments, and letting me know whether I should back out my purchase and choose a difference board.

 

[DrKK]

FreeNAS is "software RAID", it has nothing to do with any support on the mobo.

You'll be fine.

Except for the fact that you can't boot from USB sticks on the X11 series (or any Skylake). At least not yet.

 

[Ericloewe]

All the major components on the X11 boards (besides CPU/PCH) are well-known parts. The i210AT NICs are easily the best single-port GbE NICs you can get and are fully compatible, as every X10 user will tell you. The BMC is the exact same ASpeed 2400 from the X10s.

I expect the X11SSM-F to be unproblematic, besides the known issues with lack of EHCI support.

The 10GbE and SAS3 controllers included on some boards are unsupported and a bit less than stable, respectively, but this will change in the relatively near future.

 

[MurrayS]

Dang it...Apparently, missed this tidbit about Intel cutting bootable USB support from skylake architecture! Will need to get an internal drive for it then.
Thank you guys for the replies.

 

[Ericloewe]

Intel cutting bootable USB support from skylake architecture!

Not quite.

It's just that FreeNAS 9.3 has XHCI disabled by default, because it was very unstable - particularly with the omnipresent Lynx Point PCHs (C22x, Z87, etc).
With Skylake, Intel was more aggressive than usual in getting rid of older features and decided that all PCH USB ports, including USB 2.0, would only support XHCI and not any of the older, version-specific standards.

So that leaves FreeNAS 9.3 with no support for any USB port on X11 motherboards.

Your options are:

• USB 2.0 PCI-e card
• Boot from a SATA (or SAS, but why would you do that?) device
• PCI-e ATA controller (if such a thing even exists) plus a CF card