[OmniOS-discuss] list of know-compatible motherboards?

Sun Mar 22 21:05:45 UTC 2015

Hi Ben,

Thanks for the tip.  It turns out that board had some actual physical
defects that were causing some weird behaviour that was confusing the whole
issue.  What you suggest should work perfectly for that scenario.  I'm
exchanging the board and I'm sure the new one will be fine.

Thanks again for the idea.

Best regards,
joe boren

-jb-
*Joseph Boren*

IT Specialist
*DRAKE COOPER*
+ c: (208) 891-2128 + o: (208) 342-0925
+ 416 S. 8th St., Boise, ID 83702
+ w: drakecooper.com + f: /drakecooper <http://facebook.com/drakecooper> +
t: @drakecooper <http://twitter.com/drakecooper>

On Sat, Mar 21, 2015 at 1:08 AM, Ben Kitching <narratorben at icloud.com>
wrote:

> Hi Joe,
>
> I’ve had similar problems with Supermicro boards in the past.
>
> Have you tried disabling the option ROMs for your HBA’s in the BIOS?
>
> That solved it for us.
>
> On 20 Mar 2015, at 23:15, Joseph Boren <jboren at drakecooper.com> wrote:
>
> Sorry to dredge this old thread up, but I wanted to add my experience with
> the Supermicro H8SGL-F motherboard, on the off chance someone is
> considering using that motherboard and reads this thread.   And this is in
> no way a criticism of Fábio, or complaint about his recommendations.  I
> appreciate the advice and I'm sure his use case is just different enough
> from mine that he didn't surface these issues.
>
> This board has some limitations that may make it not a great choice
> depending on your intentions for it.  First of all, the BIOS can see a
> maximum of 12 attached HDs.  And for some strange reason it sees HDs
> attached to HBAs before it sees HDs attached to the onboard SATA
> connectors, so if you have 12 drives attached to HBAs you cannot use the
> onboard SATA, BIOS can't see it (if you have 11 drives on HBAs you can see
> 1 local drive, etc).  In addition, if you have more than 12 drives attached
> to HBAs, you can't boot from the drives higher than 12.   So I have 14
> drives attached to 2 8port HBAs, I can only set any of the first 12 as boot
> devices.  13 and 14 cannot be used.   Finally (i think), if you have 12 or
> more drives attached to any HBA, on board SATA, whatever, you cannot boot
> from a flash drive.  Even if you set it as the ONLY boot device it will
> just skip it and complain that there is no bootable device.  If you only
> have 11 drives you can boot from USB Flash no problem.  Interestingly, a
> USB CDROM is unaffected by this.  You can select and boot from a USB CDROM
> regardless of how many drives are attached.  Finally (actually this time I
> think), it appears to be impossible to set up a mirrored syspool on this
> motherboard, because there is only one slot in the Bios boot order menu for
> Hard Disk.  So you can only choose one of the mirror pair as a boot
> device.  There is no way to specify another HD as a second priority boot
> device.  Now once you get OmniOS loaded it can see and make use of all
> drives attached to the system, but you are very restricted in what you can
> use for boot devices.
>
> After the better part of 2 weeks of back and forth with Supermicro support
> (who have been really nice and cooperative, but unable to do anything about
> it), I'm going to have to eat cost of this board/cpu/memory and get
> something else.  If your use case is 12 total drives or less, and no
> mirrored boot, this board will work fine.  If you need more than 12 drives,
> or mirrored syspool, it will not work.
>
> Thanks
> Joe
>
>
> -jb-
> *Joseph Boren*
>
> IT Specialist
> *DRAKE COOPER*
> + c: (208) 891-2128 + o: (208) 342-0925
> + 416 S. 8th St., Boise, ID 83702
> + w: drakecooper.com + f: /drakecooper <http://facebook.com/drakecooper> +
>  t: @drakecooper <http://twitter.com/drakecooper>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 4:54 PM, Joseph Boren <jboren at drakecooper.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Wow, Fábio, thanks so much, that is very helpful.  I was looking at
>> supermicro motherboards, so your info is perfect.
>>
>> I will have a look at those, I'm guessing I can find something that fits
>> my use case.  Thanks again, the help is much appreciated.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>>
>> -jb-
>> *Joseph Boren*
>>
>> IT Specialist
>> *DRAKE COOPER*
>> + c: (208) 891-2128 + o: (208) 342-0925
>> + 416 S. 8th St., Boise, ID 83702
>> + w: drakecooper.com + f: /drakecooper <http://facebook.com/drakecooper>
>> + t: @drakecooper <http://twitter.com/drakecooper>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 4:48 PM, Fábio Rabelo <fabio at fabiorabelo.wiki.br>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I can show you what motherboards I have installed and fully working in
>>> the customers of mine :
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/motherboard/Opteron6000/SR56x0/H8DG6-F.cfm
>>>
>>> http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/motherboard/Opteron6000/SR56x0/H8DG6.cfm
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/motherboard/Opteron6000/SR56x0/H8DGi-F.cfm
>>>
>>> http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/motherboard/Opteron6000/SR56x0/H8DGi.cfm
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/motherboard/Opteron6000/SR56x0/H8SGL-F.cfm
>>>
>>> http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/motherboard/Opteron6000/SR56x0/H8SGL.cfm
>>>
>>> The ones with LSI SAS controler needs to be flashed with IT firmware,
>>> you can find them in the official Supermicro FTP site :
>>>
>>> ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/Driver/SAS/LSI/
>>>
>>> Opterons from 8 to 24 cores, no issue whats soever ...
>>>
>>> Some of them are up and running for over an year !!!
>>>
>>>
>>> Fábio Rabelo
>>>
>>> 2014-11-19 21:35 GMT-02:00 Joseph Boren <jboren at drakecooper.com>:
>>>
>>>> Is anyone aware of a list, even a short list, of motherboards that are
>>>> known to be compatible with OmniOS?  The illumos HCL doesn't list any
>>>> motherboards.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -jb-
>>>> *Joseph Boren*
>>>>
>>>> IT Specialist
>>>> *DRAKE COOPER*
>>>> + c: (208) 891-2128 + o: (208) 342-0925
>>>> + 416 S. 8th St., Boise, ID 83702
>>>> + w: drakecooper.com + f: /drakecooper
>>>> <http://facebook.com/drakecooper> + t: @drakecooper
>>>> <http://twitter.com/drakecooper>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> OmniOS-discuss mailing list
>>>> OmniOS-discuss at lists.omniti.com
>>>> http://lists.omniti.com/mailman/listinfo/omnios-discuss
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
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