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    The SuperMicro Quad 10GbE card (AOC-STG-b4S) and pfSense…

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    • stephenw10S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by

      That card is based on the Broadcom 57840 chipset. I can't find any evidence that this is supported in any version of FreeBSD, even the latest bleeding edge stuff. So I'm going to say definitely not under 2.0.X and almost certainly not under 2.1. Sorry.

      Steve

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      • D
        dataresilience
        last edited by

        Steve, many thanks for your reply. As suspected.
        I will go back to Supermicro and see if there is a chance they have a driver in the pipe for FreeBSD.
        Fingers crossed.
        Cheers,
        ///peo

        @stephenw10:

        That card is based on the Broadcom 57840 chipset. I can't find any evidence that this is supported in any version of FreeBSD, even the latest bleeding edge stuff. So I'm going to say definitely not under 2.0.X and almost certainly not under 2.1. Sorry.

        Steve

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • D
          dataresilience
          last edited by

          Steve,

          As a follow up on this, and pardon my ignorance here, what exactly do I need to do to get support for this chipset in FreeBSD so that I may use the 10GbE card with pfSense? At this point it seems that anyone that are lookng for a 10GbE setup will have to abandon pfSense and look for a packet filter that runs on another OS? pfSense is the best filter (and o many other things) I have used, so I would really like to find a way to stay on this platform…

          Any suggestions or pointers greatly appreciated.

          ///peo

          @stephenw10:

          That card is based on the Broadcom 57840 chipset. I can't find any evidence that this is supported in any version of FreeBSD, even the latest bleeding edge stuff. So I'm going to say definitely not under 2.0.X and almost certainly not under 2.1. Sorry.

          Steve

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • stephenw10S
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by

            Well you could get Broadcom to release a driver for FreeBSD, and it would have to be compatible with FreeBSD 8.3.

            You could try to get support added to the bxe(4) driver which supports other Broadcom 10GbE cards.

            You could write the driver yourself if you have the coding skillls.

            There are plenty of other 10GbE Nics that do work with pfSense. Most people would recommend using Intel. See: ixgb(4) ixgbe(4)

            Steve

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            • D
              dataresilience
              last edited by

              Hi Steve, thank you so much for your reply.

              Short term I will go with Intel then just to avoid getting halted in my tracks, and settle with dual port 10GbE SFP+
              I have a 1U server so in production I will need a quad port card, but for evaluation and for the 10GbE cluster to work with the pfSense GW
              two ports will be fine.

              I found this card:
              http://ark.intel.com/products/39776/Intel-Ethernet-Converged-Network-Adapter-X520-DA2

              It has the 82599ES controller not the 82598EB listed at the ixgbe(4)-link, would that be a problem you think?
              FreeBSD 9 is listed among supported OS'es for this card:
              –-
              Windows Server 2012*, Windows 8*, Windows Server 2008 R2*, Windows 7*, Windows Server 2008* SP2, Windows Vista* SP2, Windows Server 2003 R2*, Windows Server 2003* SP2, Linux* Stable Kernel version 3.x, 2.6,x, Red Hat Enterprise Linux* 5, 6, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server* 10, 11, FreeBSD 9*, , VMware ESX/ESXi*

              Close but no Cigar? :-)

              Cheers,
                ///peo

              @stephenw10:

              Well you could get Broadcom to release a driver for FreeBSD, and it would have to be compatible with FreeBSD 8.3.

              You could try to get support added to the bxe(4) driver which supports other Broadcom 10GbE cards.

              You could write the driver yourself if you have the coding skillls.

              There are plenty of other 10GbE Nics that do work with pfSense. Most people would recommend using Intel. See: ixgb(4) ixgbe(4)

              Steve

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • stephenw10S
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                The X520-DA2 is confirmed working under 2.1:
                http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,57121.msg305005.html#msg305005

                I am not really the right person to comment on this, I've never tried a 10GbE card in pfSense.

                Steve

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                • D
                  dataresilience
                  last edited by

                  Steve, thank you for the pointer, I will let you know how this works out. ///peo

                  @stephenw10:

                  The X520-DA2 is confirmed working under 2.1:
                  http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,57121.msg305005.html#msg305005

                  I am not really the right person to comment on this, I've never tried a 10GbE card in pfSense.

                  Steve

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                  • M
                    msi
                    last edited by

                    The only thing I had to tune a bit was nmbclusters and queues as mentioned in the wiki to get X520-DA2 + 4 i350 running and recognized altogether.
                    http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Tuning_and_Troubleshooting_Network_Cards

                    Although I then followed Intel's recommendation for 10GBE nics which is a even higher nmbclusters number. I also tuned a bit the used queues, but that' about it.
                    (i.e. http://downloadmirror.intel.com/14688/eng/README.txt)

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                    • ?
                      A Former User
                      last edited by

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                      • D
                        Downloadski
                        last edited by

                        i use x520-DA2 cards in my freebsd file servers (zfsguru is on freebsd 9.1) and there i had to tweak some buffers as well, otherwise the link would not come up.

                        kern.ipc.nmbclusters=262144
                        kern.ipc.nmbjumbop=262144
                        Kern.ipc.nmbjumbo16=32000
                        Kern.ipc.nmbjumbo9=64000

                        I got this info from: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=24723

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