All your X11SSH-F questions answered here!

[joeschmuck]

So my IPMI is DEAD. The BMC apparently isn't working correctly. All things were working fine last night and I shut down the machine, turned off the power to the machine, this morning powered it up and no IPMI. The BMC doesn't know the firmware version and status is NOT WORKING. This doesn't sound like a good situation. I'll start to comb through the manual to see if I can reset the thing.

EDIT: The heartbeat LED is lit solid, no flashing.

EDIT2: I had updated my BIOS and BMC firmware when I got the machine. It's possible the BMC firmware just crapped out on me. I have submitted a trouble ticket with Supermicro to see if I can manually upgrade the BMC firmware, not sure it will work since the Heart Beat indicator is lit. The DOS instructions with the firmware SMT_X11_113 are for an older version of the flash program so I'm not sure how to use the program properly so I'm waiting on Tech Support to both point me to the correct BMC firmware file and the instructions on how to use it. Hopefully they will get back to me this morning. I'm sure I can figure it out myself but if they have a newer firmware file, well I want that.

 

[Ericloewe]

So my IPMI is DEAD. The BMC apparently isn't working correctly. All things were working fine last night and I shut down the machine, turned off the power to the machine, this morning powered it up and no IPMI. The BMC doesn't know the firmware version and status is NOT WORKING. This doesn't sound like a good situation. I'll start to comb through the manual to see if I can reset the thing.

EDIT: The heartbeat LED is lit solid, no flashing.

I'd probably flash the latest BMC firmware using the DOS tool and see where it goes from there.

 

[Nathan Belanger]

That's the problem (apparently). The virtual CD drive is a USB device hanging off the PCH.

I had to resort to installing on a different system and moving the OS drive back. I do plan to investigate a bit better, but things aren't looking very good at the moment.

So let me make sure I have this right - please let me know if not correct
I should be able to take an older hard drive in my current pc - format the hard drive - copy over single freenas 9.3 .iso and plug that into a sata port on this motherboard, change the boot order to boot from that hard drive with the single freenas .iso file and choose to install freenas to the 2xSuperDOM devices I will put on the motherboard and it should work?

Do I need to do anything special to the hard drive to make it bootable or it should it work just fine booting from that hard drive with a single .iso file?

 

[joeschmuck]

I reflashed it with SMT_X11_113.bin and it came back to life.

 

[Ericloewe]

I should be able to take an older hard drive in my current pc - format the hard drive - copy over single freenas 9.3 .iso and plug that into a sata port on this motherboard, change the boot order to boot from that hard drive with the single freenas .iso file and choose to install freenas to the 2xSuperDOM devices I will put on the motherboard and it should work?

The copy part has to be a dd or equivalent. Can't just copy onto a filesystem.

It should theoretically work. It didn't work when I tried it, but I'm willing to blame a borked dd (user error, SATA interface crapping out, take your pick).

 

[Nathan Belanger]

The copy part has to be a dd or equivalent. Can't just copy onto a filesystem.

It should theoretically work. It didn't work when I tried it, but I'm willing to blame a borked dd (user error, SATA interface crapping out, take your pick).

So I'm struggling a little bit with how technically I could get this to work if I get this X11 motherboard want to use the 2x SuperDOM SATA ports as my FreeNAS boot devices - I have an ( old X58 platform ) I could use to try some trickery but my mind is coming up empty- Looking for ideas or suggestions

I ordered the Norco 4224 4U Chassis w/24xSata Hot Swappable drives and I'm considering this motherboard. USB booting is out of the question obviously.
I would like to eventually use the 2xSuperDOM SATA ports on this motherboard to use as the FreeNAS boot drives as my final spot, but I need to figure out a way to get FreeNAS installed on them.
It doesn't sound like I can take a spare SATA drive from my old computer with the .iso over to the new computer and boot from that to install to the 2x SuperDOM SATA devices.
It doesn't sound like you can mount the .iso through IPMI because that emulates ECHI and not XCHI
My older computer doesn't have an M2 port to install on that device and bring it to the new computer
My old computer does not have powered SuperDOM SATA ports to install in the old computer and install FreeNAS on them and then move to the new..

The only thing I can think is to install to an old 500GB SATA drive on my old computer and use that on the new computer until FreeNAS 10 releases.

I will be populating the hot swappable bays with hard drives and the 3 PCI-e with 3xM1015 SAS Controller cards for the 24 drives
Where will I be able to stuff the boot device?

 

[Ericloewe]

through IPMI because that emulates ECHI and not XCHI

Other way around.

It doesn't sound like I can take a spare SATA drive from my old computer with the .iso over to the new computer and boot

Have you tried? It really should work, if done correctly. If it doesn't, we'll have to take it up with Supermicro. Their Windows 7 install compatibility option doesn't work at all, for instance.

My old computer does not have powered SuperDOM SATA ports to install in the old computer and install FreeNAS on them and then move to the new..

Those things come with power cables, right? Just hook them up to Molex.

 

[DocVadr]

I was able to install FreeNAS on my X11SSH-F-O by extracting the ISO to a spare HDD and booting off it, then installing to a SuperDOM.
I used a USB dock and Rufus (with the "List USB Hard Drives" option ticked) to extract the iso to the drive. Worked fine that way after I couldn't get it to install off USB at all.

 

[Ericloewe]

I was able to install FreeNAS on my X11SSH-F-O by extracting the ISO to a spare HDD and booting off it, then installing to a SuperDOM.
I used a USB dock and Rufus (with the "List USB Hard Drives" option ticked) to extract the iso to the drive. Worked fine that way after I couldn't get it to install off USB at all.

Thanks for the confirmation, my assumption of a borked dd was probably correct, then.

 

[vikozo6]

Hello
would it be easyer to install from a PXE Server? would this be possible?
have a nice day
vincent

 

[Rand]

Hello
would it be easyer to install from a PXE Server? would this be possible?

Give it a shot:) https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...install-freenas-9-2-0-over-the-network.17714/
Or try the new nightly builds if you don't need a production ready system asap :) (https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/9-3-2-is-now-in-nightlies-testing.41806)

 

[vikozo6]

@Rand
Thanks for your Feedback, my question was because the USB port won't work....
i hope this will work on a normal PXE Server too.

 

[joeschmuck]

I'm not sure that I would want to use another device to boot FreeNAs from. That means you are dependent on that other device. But you can give it a shot and report back if it works or not.

 

[brichard]

Can you boot from USB on 9.10 with this board?

 

[Ericloewe]

Can you boot from USB on 9.10 with this board?

Of course.

 

[jingle]

It's sitting at a constant 55W idle

Well that number contains all the noise from attached components. How do the X11SSH-F perform in terms of power consumption and efficiency?

1. Are there better boards for a low-energy setup?
2. Is there a difference in power consumption between the X11SSH-F (5 phases) and X11SSM-F (3 phases)

 

[joeschmuck]

Here are my power draw stats for my system and I personally feel these are very reasonable power consumption levels:

System with ESXi in Maintenance Mode (no VMs running) and six WD drives spinning: 40 watts (wish I unplugged the drives but they are in the basement, not worth the effort, I already know the system I have draws not much power)

System with FreeNAS VM running but FreeNAS not transferring data: 58 watts

System with FreeNAS VM running and WD Reds all spinning and FreeNAS transferring large and small files: 68 watts

My complete system running all my VMs normally and FreeNAS idle: 61 watts

My complete system running all my VMs normally and FreeNAS running a scrub: 68 to 87 watts (fluctuates based on CPU load, may go higher but didn't observe it).

Some info about my FreeNAS VM: I only give 2 CPU cores to FreeNAS and 16GB RAM. While running the scrub the VM Client states that I'm only using 450MHz to 4.5GHz CPU (fluctuates as required by the scrub and has 6.8GHz available if needed).

Additionally I would focus on the differences as a whole between the X11SSH-F and X11SSM-F, not just the 3 vs. 5 phases.

Are there better boards for a low-energy setup?

That is subjective because what is considered better? But lower current draw, certainly but you get less performance depending on what you plan to do with the device.

 

[joeschmuck]

So on my X11SSM-F board, is there a way to make it boot faster? It appears to do a lot of checks during the boot process and I'd like to reduce that. There are a lot of BIOS settings which I'm not familiar with, this being a server board. I don't want to just willy nilly start disabling things.

 

[Ericloewe]

So on my X11SSM-F board, is there a way to make it boot faster? It appears to do a lot of checks during the boot process and I'd like to reduce that. There are a lot of BIOS settings which I'm not familiar with, this being a server board. I don't want to just willy nilly start disabling things.

Disabling all option ROMs may help (particularly the NICs). UEFI boot may help, too, but otherwise, I can't think of anything.

 

[joeschmuck]

Yea, I just recorded the boot sequence in a video and I think I'll have to live with it. It takes 1 minute 44 seconds from power on to get to the DXE Boot Ready message and then it jumps right into loading ESXi. The real item which takes the longest single amount of time is the PEI - Intel Reference Code Execution. The PXE adapters take only a few seconds so it's not worth changing the BIOS for those. I should just be happy for the great motherboard I have.