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 <tsc...@mst.edu> writes: > >> On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 10:52 PM, Harry Putnam <rea...@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 _______________________________________________ openindiana-discuss mailing list openindiana-discuss@openindiana.org http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss _______________________________________________ openindiana-discuss mailing list openindiana-discuss@openindiana.org http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
