Will Supermicro 5019A-FTN4 work with PfSense

yswery

I saw a few old threads there is a chance this hardware doesnt work with the latest pfsense, I am bit confused and wanted to confirm if the Supermicro 5019A-FTN4 will work with pfsense 2.4.4 and above

Atom processor C3758
Quad Gigabit Ethernet LAN via Intel C3000 SoC

Thanks!

Rico

If you already own this hardware just try it.
If not I would not buy this one for running pfSense...

-Rico

stephenw10

I expect it to work with 2.4.4. There were drivers for the C3K NICs missing from earlier FreeBSD versions but they are in 11.2.

https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/releases/versions-of-pfsense-and-freebsd.html

Steve

yswery

@stephenw10 said in Will Supermicro 5019A-FTN4 work with PfSense:

I expect it to work with 2.4.4. There were drivers for the C3K NICs missing from earlier FreeBSD versions but they are in 11.2.

Oh thanks for the pointers, puts some confidence in it then :)

@rico said in Will Supermicro 5019A-FTN4 work with PfSense:

If not I would not buy this one for running pfSense...

Just curious, why not? I am trying to do a comparison to the XG-7100 1U, with the idea that fully set up the SuperMicro will be a touch cheaper and easier to source in my country (NZ)

JeGr

Don't understand the commect from @Rico either but just FYI @yswery Netgate's own SG-5100 and SG/XG-7100 is built on a Intel Atom C3558 SOC, so I wouldn't expect that many problems with a C3758 which is basically the same SOC (family) but adds 4 cores and a little more speed and caches to the mix. Otherwise the platform should be the same.

Greets
Jens

stephenw10

Well if you're buying hardware specifically to run pfSense buying it from Netgate ensures it's been fully tested to work and will be with future versions. As well as supporting project development etc.

But shipping and import duties are a reality.

Steve

Rico

You can't just take any Supermicro box with pfSense CE image and compare it to the XG-7100 saying it is the same platform as this image (pfSense-netgate-memstick-XG-7100-2.4.4-RELEASE-p2-amd64.img.gz) is highly adjusted to this architecture AFAIK.
But the right person is in this thread to correct me if I'm wrong @stephenw10
Generally speaking if you ask for my 2 cents: spending hundreds of bucks for a firewall assumes you need this for business...you then really care about spending few more and have a 100% tested and working hardware/software combination, e.g. XG-7100 or any other Netgate device?
You risk the trouble of bad working drivers and stuff like that to save lets say $300?

-Rico

stephenw10

The differences are not huge for the x86 devices. Sometime there are significant things such as when the XG-7100 was launched support for C3K NICs was not in FreeBSD base. We pulled that in but only ever tested it on XG-7100 so it wasn't included in the CE release. Now that's in base so it's widely tested by FreeBSD users.
I expect the SM box to work fine but I've never tested it and to my knowledge neither has anyone else at Netgate so it might not. Some obscure bug might exist that no-one had run into yet. It might get triggered on FreeBSD 12. It's unlikely but it has happened before.
If you're running the XG-7100 you know that won't happen because we will have been testing it for months.

Steve

JeGr

@rico said in Will Supermicro 5019A-FTN4 work with PfSense:

You can't just take any Supermicro box with pfSense CE image and compare it to the XG-7100 saying it is the same platform as this image (pfSense-netgate-memstick-XG-7100-2.4.4-RELEASE-p2-amd64.img.gz) is highly adjusted to this architecture AFAIK.

I didn't write that anywhere. I was pointing out, that Netgate itself uses the SOC without problems and has been before it was introduced officially with 2.4.4 and the step up of the FreeBSD base. So as Steve wrote it should simply work now. I wasn't telling anyone to use a netgate / ADI image on other hardware, that would be stupid.

Besides that, if one uses almost identical hardware to the 5100 or 7100 there shouldn't be much surprises in hardware. That's all :)