X11SBA-LN4F vs A1SRi-2558F
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After sending screen shots of the watchdog timeouts (FreeBSD 10.1, FreeBSD 11 and now Ubuntu 15.04) to SuperMicro, they have finally decided that I need to RMA the board. I really hoping I just got a bad board and not a bad design. Too much money in this thing to have a bad design.
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Your board is $300 on Amazon.
This:
http://store.netgate.com/ADI/RCC-VE-4860-board.aspx and is priced at $406.
but it has:
More clockspeed (2.5GHz .vs 1.6Ghz on your board)
8GB ram (your board has 0)
8GB (at least, new ones will be more) storage (emmc) on-board (your board has 0)
More Ethernets (6 .vs 4)
Better Ethernet (4 are i350, 2 are i210, your board has 4 i210)
You'll need an ATX power supply to power your board. The 4860 runs on a simple 12VDC barrel connector. -
@jwt:
Your board is $300 on Amazon.
This:
http://store.netgate.com/ADI/RCC-VE-4860-board.aspx and is priced at $406.
but it has:
More clockspeed (2.5GHz .vs 1.6Ghz on your board)
8GB ram (your board has 0)
8GB (at least, new ones will be more) storage (emmc) on-board (your board has 0)
More Ethernets (6 .vs 4)
Better Ethernet (4 are i350, 2 are i210, your board has 4 i210)
You'll need an ATX power supply to power your board. The 4860 runs on a simple 12VDC barrel connector.And on top it comes together with 1x mSATA and 2x miniPCIe + SIM slots and yours only with 1x Mini-PCIe slot.
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@jwt:
Your board is $300 on Amazon.
This:
http://store.netgate.com/ADI/RCC-VE-4860-board.aspx and is priced at $406.
but it has:
More clockspeed (2.5GHz .vs 1.6Ghz on your board)
8GB ram (your board has 0)
8GB (at least, new ones will be more) storage (emmc) on-board (your board has 0)
More Ethernets (6 .vs 4)
Better Ethernet (4 are i350, 2 are i210, your board has 4 i210)
You'll need an ATX power supply to power your board. The 4860 runs on a simple 12VDC barrel connector.My board cost $216 shipped from Comp Source. I paid less than about $305 for everything in it. I get it - you don't like this damn board and that's your choice. Right now, I don't like it either (because it doesn't work properly) but I have it and am trying to get it to work. Why do you have a hard on over this issue? If this is the way the admin is going to act on this site, I can see why the 'other' folks felt a need to fork off and go a 'different' direction.
@BlueKobold:
And on top it comes together with 1x mSATA and 2x miniPCIe + SIM slots and yours only with 1x Mini-PCIe slot.
That's nice and all….but I need these why?
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If this is the way the admin is going to act on this site, I can see why the 'other' folks felt a need to fork off and go a 'different' direction.
Just to be clear - the user "BlueKobold" is NOT an Admin/Supervisor/Sysop or any other figure of "authority" any more than I am (as far as I know anyway).
Many (most?) of us on this Forum are unpaid volunteers who happen to have invested time and effort into making pfSense what it is today IMHO - YMMV.
Some have better or worse people/language/bedside manners than others.
Many have pet peeves, techniques that should "ALWAYS" be used, others that should "NEVER" be used and everything in between.As always they are (mostly) opinions, and like a**holes - everyones' got one ::)
Remember - it takes all of us to make a planet - and its the only one we've got (so far).
Just my $0.02
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My board cost $216 shipped from Comp Source.
Seems to be $228.33 here:
http://www.compsource.com/pn/MBDX11SBALN4FO/Supermicro-428/X11sbaLn4f-N3700-Fcbga-Pentium–Max8gb-Ddr3-MiniItx-MBDX11SBALN4FO-MBDX11SBALN4FO/
I paid less than about $305 for everything in it.
So you've got $77 to spend for ram, disk, etc.
Now, what is your time worth?
Moreover, what am I to do with the negative reputation you're heaping on pfSense because you're attempting to run it on inferior platforms?
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@jwt:
Moreover, what am I to do with the negative reputation you're heaping on pfSense because you're attempting to run it on inferior platforms?
You show me where I'm giving a negative reputation to pfSense! I've clearly stated that I think this is a hardware issue or driver / BIOS issue at this point. As far as I'm concerned, you can go screw yourself you self absorbed prick. pfSense may be fine, but if you're the face of it or behind any of it, I don't want any part of it.
As far as my time, I did this as a project, not because I NEEDED it. My $99 Asus router works fine but I've heard so many good things about pfSense that I wanted to build a low power, future proof PC based router. Why do you give a care about what I do with my spare time? It's mine, not yours.
Oh, and here's the $216 link since you seem so hellbent against anything to do with me or this board:
http://www.compsource.com/ttechnote.asp?part_no=MBDX11SBALN4FO&vid=428&src=F
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That's nice and all….but I need these why?
I have not told anything about you need it! And I only wrote it because the both boards were compared in price
against each other and I was only thinking that the 2 more miniPCIe slots and the SIM slots would
not be soldered on the board with no cost or for nothing of cost.Just to be clear - the user "BlueKobold" is NOT an Admin/Supervisor/Sysop or any other figure of "authority" any more than I am (as far as I know anyway).
This was written under the Quote from jwt and not under mine, and what we others all are is written under
our names on the left side.I am out of this thread now, it sounds to strange to me.
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Oh, and here's the $216 link since you seem so hellbent against anything to do with me or this board:
http://www.compsource.com/ttechnote.asp?part_no=MBDX11SBALN4FO&vid=428&src=F
Looks like a $228 link.
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Oh, and here's the $216 link since you seem so hellbent against anything to do with me or this board:
http://www.compsource.com/ttechnote.asp?part_no=MBDX11SBALN4FO&vid=428&src=F
Looks like a $228 link.
The search through Google for "Supermicro N3700" and then click on the Shopping link.
or
www.froogle.com and enter "Supermicro N3700" (no quotes). Look for $216.10 price.
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@jwt:
You'll need an ATX power supply to power your board.
Key Features
1. Intel Pentium Processor N3700,
Socket FCBGA 1170; CPU 6W
~snip~
11. 12V DC or ATXhttp://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/X11/X11SBA-LN4F.cfm
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Oh, and here's the $216 link since you seem so hellbent against anything to do with me or this board:
http://www.compsource.com/ttechnote.asp?part_no=MBDX11SBALN4FO&vid=428&src=F
Looks like a $228 link.
The search through Google for "Supermicro N3700" and then click on the Shopping link.
You must have a coupon code or some other promotional offer saved. There is a small "11% off" tag that displays in the screenshot you posted that is not there when others (myself included) click on the posted link.
Care to share the discount code? ;D
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@jwt:
My board cost $216 shipped from Comp Source.
Seems to be $228.33 here:
http://www.compsource.com/pn/MBDX11SBALN4FO/Supermicro-428/X11sbaLn4f-N3700-Fcbga-Pentium–Max8gb-Ddr3-MiniItx-MBDX11SBALN4FO-MBDX11SBALN4FO/
I paid less than about $305 for everything in it.
So you've got $77 to spend for ram, disk, etc.
Now, what is your time worth?
Moreover, what am I to do with the negative reputation you're heaping on pfSense because you're attempting to run it on inferior platforms?
Somebody definitely pissed in your Cheerios bowl yesterday…
You should applaud the time and effort Engineer put into making this board work, yet all you can come up with is some undeserved negativism.
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To anyone who is interested in this board and the progress on it, please PM me. I'll keep you updated via PM. It's obvious that some of the people, including the powers to be, have an issue with it and/or this posting. I'll no longer update the status in this thead
Please don't let some smart-ass response leave you with such negativity. I've been following this thread very closely, since i was on a quest to build my own pfsense box, and i think you are doing great in contributing to this community with your effort to resolve this issue. Thanks for that.
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I've decided to update this thread because of lots of interest in this board.
After sending the board out via RMA to SuperMicro, they kept it for about 3 weeks or so and ran the tests that I had used to trigger the watchdog timeout. The engineering team came back and said that they had found the issue and had made a hardware change to my board. I have tried to get a better explanation as to whether this was a defect on my board only or ALL of these board but have received nothing back yet.
With that in mind, I tested the board for four days using Ubuntu 15.04 (was still on my drive). Previously, it would not run for more than 30 hours with going down. After the four day test, I installed pfsense and ran the same test. It has been running for two days with no issue so far. I'm not running a WAN but that doesn't matter as I was able to get it to crash previously without a WAN port simply by bombarding it with LAN traffic.
If anyone has any specific questions, I'll try to answer. If the board will run for seven (7) days without crashing the ports, I'll move it back into full WAN service.
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Much appreciated update.
On a side note, I cannot stop myself wondering what https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?action=profile;u=273195 is going to say about this.
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Thanks for the update! ;)
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On a side note, I cannot stop myself wondering what https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?action=profile;u=273195 is going to say about this.
Me, either.
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Have just moved this back into full service (WAN) and am running off of it since it made it 8 days (4 on Ubuntu and 4 on pfsense 2.2.5/FreeBSD) without a network going down issue. I'll keep people informed and answer questions that I can. Also enabled TRIM for the first time (finally).
Thanks for the help everyone and Merry Christmas! :)
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Currently at 4+ days on pfsense 2.2.5 / FreeBSD 10.1 without the LAN going down / Watchdog. I think it would be fair to say that this issue has been solved for my board. Now whether SuperMicro has to change other boards or BIOS is anyone's guess right now as I have no feedback from them yet.
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Thanks for all the info!
I was wondering how it performs your board when under heavy usage and adding snort, ntopng,etc. I'm currently using a Mac Mini (late 2012) with pfSense and when using all my internet (around 200/20) the CPU usage gets around 40%). My CPU is a i5-3210M, looking at cpubenchmarks website it seems it got around the double of performance of yours… so that would mean (more or less) that when getting 200mbps from the router you should see an usage of around 80%.
Do you have any numbers on this? thanks!
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bluepr0, sorry, I don't. I looked at your specs and your processor is a dual core with hyperthreading while this one is a slower quad core processor. Your CPU load number seem higher than I would have expected thinking that your processor should handle higher speeds at lower CPU load. I'm not experienced enough yet to say that though…just a guess on my part.
Are both of your cores pulling 40% at that time or is only one core pulling 40%? When simply pinging in and out, the average was 6Mbps in / out and I never saw any core above 4% load with all three other cores running 100% idle (using command top -S -H from the shell or from the command prompt). But, I have not other packages running and am running basic, slow (compared to yours) internet. Was trying to build a low power, somewhat future proof unit that could handle up to 1Gbps including encryption (AES-NI) in the future. Your numbers make me second guess my choice and think that I may have overestimated this board. sigh
Edit: After reading a bit, it seems it doesn't take much (relatively) to run a 1Gbps plain connection but adding SNORT, etc. is where much more processor power is needed to pump data through. SNORT is single threaded so it would eat up much more of a single CPU core (I did read you can run multiple copies of SNORT and load balance it out but it was much more difficult to do so).
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I ran again the tests, using top command to see the CPU usage (it seems the CPU usage on web interface is also accurate, making an average of all the cores or am I wrong?)
Here's the screenshots
1. This is using all my download bandwidth from the internet http://d.pr/i/1h6X9/3UOn6rvy
CPU usage is around 30% here2. This is using all my download bandwidth from internet + iperf (maxing out gigabit) http://d.pr/i/1bL1T/5PWn64bR
CPU usage is around 84% hereWhat do you think?
Thanks!
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Looks like Squid is what is eating up a lot of your resources @bluepr0.
Engineer, thanks for the update. I was going to ping you and see how things were going so your response was perfect timing.
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Yep! stopping snort, ntop reduces quite a bit the CPU usage. See http://d.pr/i/1eYwd/NinxWFhR (usage is around 50%)
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great to know! I'm wondering what they change on the board? does the other boards out there will only need a BIOS update or it's a hardware problem?
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great to know! I'm wondering what they change on the board? does the other boards out there will only need a BIOS update or it's a hardware problem?
@bluepr0, I honestly don't know. SuperMicro said it was a "hardware modification" but they will not disclose what was changed and I cannot see any physical changes to my board. When I asked whether other boards are affected or only mine, I was told that if there are any other boards out there with this problem, they will fix them. Sorry guys, I wish I could give you more but SuperMicro won't let it out. I have not seen a new BIOS other than a new IPMI firmware.
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So i decided to go with the A1SRi-2558F board (and ECC RAM). Connected LAN1 to WAN (ISP router in bridge mode, connected through surge-protected RJ45 ports on the UPS), connected other 3 LAN ports and IPMI to my (managed) switch.
Installing pfSense onto the SSD through IPMI mounted ISO… Sudden reboot... 2nd try... Install went fine, but reboot after a few minutes. My first thought is was something with the pfSense install. But....
Went into BIOS settings and before i could even make any changes... Reboot. So it's NOT a pfSense issue.
Disconnected all network cables except IPMI, restored default BIOS settings, did 10 cycles of memtest86 (took almost 3 days)... No errors and no reboots.
Then I connected LAN1 to my network, configured it as the WAN port and connected an AP to LAN2 (configured as LAN). Booted pfSense, did nothing for about an hour and no reboots.So, I am now thinking it's a problem with 1 or more of the LAN ports. I want to do some testing, maybe anyone has some idea on how to do effective / efficiënt tests on the LAN ports?
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Do you use STP or UTP cables?
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Do you use STP or UTP cables?
I use all CAT6 U/UTP cables. For the whole network, including test setup.
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This eliminates at least a possible hum/ground loop, well known to audio guys (me) and lesser known in the network world.
Just for the record: I do not say to only use UTP cables. It just rules out an idea I had in this case. -
This eliminates at least a possible hum/ground loop, well known to audio guys (me) and lesser known in the network world.
Just for the record: I do not say to only use UTP cables. It just rules out an idea I had in this case.Yeah, know what that is. In my setup i don't really need shielded cables (and i also dont want to go through the hassle of properly grounding the whole thing).
But i'm still hoping for an idea to properly test the LAN ports… -
Yeah, know what that is. In my setup i don't really need shielded cables (and i also dont want to go through the hassle of properly grounding the whole thing).
I really don´t know from where you all are and what you have to pay for network cables, but here in Germany
I have to pay the following money for each;- 1 meter patch cable CAT.5e UTP 1,80 €
- 1 meter patch cable CAT.6a S/STP (PIMF) 2,10 €
So the difference was so small that I was changing all my patch cables to CAT.6a S/STP (PIMF)
perhaps not from a premium cable vendor but better then the lazy UTP ones.But i'm still hoping for an idea to properly test the LAN ports…
- Be sure they are not on "auto" to surround a miss match
- use iPerf or NetIO from one to another PC (client & server)
- Use proper shielded cables and or a "LAN tester" for testing out also the cables.
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Just got a question related with the Atom C2758 so I thought about using this thread instead of starting a new one
These Atom Rangeley are starting to get a bit "old" so I was looking for other ideas or newer hardware. Found out that the new Xeon E3-1240Lv5 has a TDP of only 25w (5w more than the C2758). Also, it seems that on benchmarks doubles in performance the Atom (of course, not networking related task but it might help to get an overall idea).
What do the experts think about going with a "normal" server board (not so expensive, 1 IPMI, 2 LAN Intel) + this E3-1240LV5?
Prices in Spain:
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Supermicro A1SRi-2558F = 440€
Total = 440€ -
Xeon E3-1240LV5 = 330€ (It has AES, couldn't find if it has QuickAssist)
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Server board (Asrock, Gigabyte) = 250€
Total = 580€
It's a bit more expensive but also more powerful with only 5w more of TDP.
I'm genuinely asking your opinion, there's probably a lot that I'm missing. Also on a normal server board you would get "normal" server grade LAN, like the i211 or i210… while on the Supermicro you get the i350 (wondering how much of a difference this makes in practice)
Thanks!
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The Xeon E3-1240LVS does not have QuickAssist, but you can add it via PCIe. Example: http://store.netgate.com/ADI/QuickAssist8955.aspx
I think you want to compare apples to apples, so you'll need 4 x 1GbE on-board.
Supermicro X11SSH-CTF will run over $400, but has dual 10G on-board.
Supermicro X11SSH-LN4F appears to be around $220 online, and has 4 x i210.
I'm seeing E3-1240LV5 at between $290 and $320 online. Call it $300 to split the difference.So that's $520, plus ram and an enclosure for 4 x i210 and your CPU (that you probably don't need).
I don't think the Rangeley is getting a bit old. I think we've only begun to explore the acceleration potential in the SoC.
The i350 has more queues (8 per port) than the i211 (up to 2) or i210 (up to 4). We don't do a lot with RSS (yet), but it's high on the list now, and when we do, you're going to want a queue per core.
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Hey Engineer,
First just wanted to say thanks for the time/effort you've put into getting this system working. We are also in the process of rolling out this system as a gateway (although not using pfsense), and also experienced the same issue with watchdog timeouts occurring on the LAN ports (the ones that go through the Pericom608GP chip). We have 2 of them in production (both exhibit this behavior) and 10 on backorder right now, so we have a vested interest in finding out/resolving what's causing this issue. I have been in contact with supermicro as well, and they asked me to RMA my board. I would like to be able to reference the case you opened with them in an effort to determine what fixes were done on your board that resolved the problem for you without a giant duplication of effort, and obviously we don't want to have to send every board we purchase to SM for repair :). Do you have a case number available?Also, what firmware version is running on the board you got back from SM? I saw they have recently released revision 1.0a (no date mentioned but it wasn't there previously the last time I checked). I wonder if that's related or not. I installed it on the box that I have in my lab, and haven't been able to replicate the issue, but this box hadn't experienced the issue previously yet (maybe because it's not actually in production), and as you found, the issue seems to be rather sporadic and could be a few days before it occurs.
Thanks again!!
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Case# SM1511127317,
Hi, I saw the firmware last night but have not updated. No change log either. Ken Huang is the guy who handled my case. Keep me up to date if you don't mind! Thanks
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Case# SM1511127317,
Hi, I saw the firmware last night but have not updated. No change log either. Ken Huang is the guy who handled my case. Keep me up to date if you don't mind! Thanks
Thanks!! Ken is handling my case as well. I pointed him to this thread, and summarized, but he is still requesting I RMA one of the boards. I'm going through that process now, hopefully we can determine the root cause and best way to proceed going forward!
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Just a small update –
our plan was to swap a new box in for the one we are experiencing the most issues with, and RMA that one. We swapped the hardware last night and the new box seems to be even worse. We saw about 4 watchdog timeouts last night, and today, the NIC stopped functioning, but did not trigger a timeout. So it just remained indefinitely in a non-operational state, and even ifconfig igb3 down/up, and service netif restart igb3 had no effect. A reboot was the only way to restore connectivity to our LAN. During this time, both the server and the switch reported an active physical link. And this server is running the 1.0a firmware, so that obviously didn't fix anything. We might have to revert to a different device until we get this straightened out with supermicro.