[OpenIndiana-discuss] paging any HP xw8600 users.. or knowledgeable others

[Bryan N Iotti]

I had an XW8200 for a long while but didn't chime in much because mine was still SCSI+sata. 

I added an LSI SAS 4-port controller on PCIe 4x and haven't looked back until the motherboard died six months ago.

I also would suggest an add-on controller, with the caveat that you should remember to flash in IT mode and not RAID/IR.

Bryan

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.
  Original Message  
From: Michael Hase
Sent: Friday, August 8, 2014 21:04
To: Discussion list for OpenIndiana
Reply To: Discussion list for OpenIndiana
Subject: Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] paging any HP xw8600 users.. or	knowledgeable others

On Fri, 8 Aug 2014, Harry Putnam wrote:

> Timothy Coalson <tsc5yc at mst.edu> writes:
>
>> On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 10:52 PM, Harry Putnam <reader at newsguy.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I hope there are folks here who are using HP xw8600 servers. Or are
>>> knowledgable about them. (Timothy C? perhaps)
>>>
>>
>> I haven't used the model, nor much HP stuff at all...I thought there was a
>> reply from someone who had used one earlier...
>
> Ahh right you are... you did say `A shot in the dark' but your reading
> of the Aida64 report extracted much more from it than mine did.
>
> I might have missed some hw8600 user in those threads... but looking
> back... I'm either still missing it or it isn't on my server.
>
> Apparently there are not a lot of OI users who are also hw8600 users.
>
> Your input has been very helpful and I thank you for it.
>
> I'm starting to think maybe I should just get an addon sata controller
> that I understand a little better... It would not be hugely expensive
> and I have plenty of slots open.

As a former hp xw8400 user I'd recommend some extra controller, too. 
Although not sata but sas. The lsi controllers worked flawlessly for me 
with opensolaris, and still work with openindiana. I too had many problems 
with kernel panics at boot, not recognizing disks, or poor performance
on the onboard sata slots on the xw8400. There were some tips on the 
oracle hcl for bios settings of these boxes, but they deleted those old 
entries (something sun never would have done ;-) If I remember correctly 
the working but slow configuration was indeed separate ide.

I ended up with an extra lsi sas controller, and had the 4 onboard sas 
ports and 4 extra sas ports, all using the mpt driver. This configuration 
worked great, very good i/o performance with mixed sas and sata disks. I 
abandoned this fully working box due to the so called EEG constraints here 
in germany: it got replaced with a xeon e3 box. The xw8400 consumed 240W 
idle, the new box some 70W. For the difference in electricity bill you can 
buy a new box every two years over here.

I think the xw8600 is only a slightly more modern variation of the xw8400, 
and uses the same basic technology, so it should be comparable.

Cheers,
Michael

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