Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:31:04 +1000 From: Fraser Tweedale <frase@frase.id.au> To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Cc: fbsd@dannysplace.net Subject: Re: new server motherboard with SATA II Message-ID: <20080627053103.GB9582@bacardi> In-Reply-To: <4864769C.4050002@dannysplace.net> References: <486450DB.4000907@dannysplace.net> <20080627040545.GA21856@eos.sc1.parodius.com> <4864769C.4050002@dannysplace.net>
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[-- Attachment #1 --] On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 03:11:56PM +1000, Danny Carroll wrote: > Jeremy, thanks for your response. > > Jeremy Chadwick wrote: > > SATA150 and SATA300 both work just fine on FreeBSD, but its dependent > > upon what chipset you go with. I would strongly recommend you go with a > > board/system that uses Intel's ICH7, 8, or 9 southbridge. I have > > extensive experience using these in production environments, and they > > are very reliable, plus fast. FreeBSD works quite well with them. > > I do have a board with an ICH10 chipset but the SATA drives are detected > as UDMA-33. > > I guess the ICH* chipsets would not support AMD64, being an intel chip. > Intel chips support AMD64 - the architecture is called that because AMD came up with it first. Intel calls their implementation EM64T (and x86-64 refers to the same thing), but it is all AMD64. As for the issue with those drives being detected as UDMA-33, I'm not sure, and defer my response. > > Second, I wouldn't bother considering using Intel MatrixRAID (which all > > of the above chipsets support) for any sort of failover for your root/OS > > disk, in case you're tempted to try it. FreeBSD has bugs pertaining to > > such support (see below Wiki URL for some examples). > > Yeah, I'm not so keen of the modern trend to have on-board raid. I'd > rather keep it simple and let FreeBSD handle it. Root disk will not be > raid at all. > > > Third, I cannot recommend nVidia chipsets, because there have been > > numerous reports recently and in the past where the SATA disks are being > > detected as UDMA33. I believe there are some ATI/AMD chipsets which are > > doing the same. There is a rumour that the operational speed of the > > disks is still SATA150/300, and just that FreeBSD is labelling the > > negotiated speed wrong, but my recommendation is not to risk it. > > Hmmm, some people say nforce4 chipsets are cool, some not... It's hard > to know which way to go. > For the record, I concur with Jeremy's sentiments. I also had issues with SATA on nForce 520, which prompted a shift to Intel for my main system. > > Fourth, because you'll likely have multiple disks in a ZFS zpool, you > > should probably be aware of the problem that haunts some users from time > > to time (re: DMA errors). > > I've seen it on old ATA hardware. > > > http://wiki.freebsd.org/JeremyChadwick/ATA_issues_and_troubleshooting > > > >> I'd be willing to go with intel arch although from a ZFS perspective it > >> sounds like AMD64 is better. > > > > There was a recent discussion on developers@ (which is private) about > > some topics, which eventually lead into a discussion about ZFS, tuning, > > and a 2GB kmem limit in FreeBSD (which affects amd64 too). I can't copy > > the conversation/thread because developers@ has a strict "do not > > disclose" policy. > > I thought that the 2gb limit was less of a problem for AMD64 because of > the addressing used. > > > Just be aware you ***will*** need to tune ZFS on FreeBSD to make it > > as reliable as possible. > > We'll like I said, I'd be willing to jump on a list and provide info etc > about my setup. I plan to have it running on a test bench with lots of > IO for a week or so before I start using it. Even then the data will > not be critical so if it breaks then I can rebuild without hassle. > System disk will be UFS2 to keep it simple... > > I've got it running on desktop hardware (ASUS P5Q board with ICH5) while > I wait for a decision on a permanent Motherboard. With this setup I see > about 60mb write speeds on ZFS across 5 disks. I've done the basic > tuning suggested in the Wiki. One thing I notice is that the CPU is > used for 30% on Interrupts. It was firewire first, so I disabled it in > the BIOS, then it went to UHCI so I disabled all USB ports. Now it is > on the ATA controller. All of this was on the same interrupt (19). > > I'm thinking of getting a couple of Promise SATA-300 TX4 IO cards > (non-raid). Perhaps that will offload the CPU. > > -D frase [-- Attachment #2 --] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAkhkexcACgkQPw/2FZbemTUEZQCdErx4xN2pFsCJcKcUIcNwDg7A yYcAoKdoLcKLL3P99yZvRxUlLCAnJSeE =Rutn -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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