X10SL7-F Rev:1.02 Preparation

[DiViDeR]

I've just received the X10SL7-F board and would be grateful if someone could guide me through the best procedure for preparing the board for FreeNas use. I've downloaded the latest BIOS, Redfish & PH20 files, but am unsure about the best order to do things.

The system is still unbuilt and the board can be powered up on the workbench for RAM testing prior to BIOS updates.

Parts so far:-

M/B - X10SL7-F (Amazon UK)
RAM - 4 x 8Gb Crucial CT102472BD160B (Amazon UK)
CPU - Xeon E3-1231-V3 (Scan)
Case - Fractal Design R4 (Scan)
HDDs - TBC

I'm familiar with Windows & assembling computers, but no next to nothing about FreeNas or UNIX based OS.

Thanks in advance ...

 

[Ericloewe]

best order to do things

Start by updating all sorts of firmware (BIOS/UEFI, BMC/IPMI, SAS2, ...). Those have the highest chance of breaking stuff, so get those done quickly to return the hardware to the vendor if something goes wrong.
I don't have a specific order for those, but I typically do the BIOS first, then IPMI. The rest is secondary, in a way.

Then do the burn-in stuff. Memtest, badblocks, prime95, ...

M/B - X10SL7-F (Amazon UK)
RAM - 4 x 8Gb Crucial CT102472BD160B (Amazon UK)
CPU - Xeon E3-1231-V3 (Scan)
Case - Fractal Design R4 (Scan)

So far so good.

 

[DiViDeR]

Thanks for the quick reply. I've been working my way through various threads about how to do the BIOS & other upgrades and it seems a lot more complicated than standard consumer boards. I'll assemble the board, CPU & RAM and work through things tomorrow.

 

[DiViDeR]

Initial preparation complete now.

I assembled the M/B, RAM & CPU and connected a PSU, monitor and keyboard on the workbench to run Memtest86 scans. After several clear runs I used the following order.

Bios - shipped version 3.0 (04/24/15) - created bootable USB FAT32 and copied BIOS ver 3.0a files to it. Booted to DOS prompt and ran ami.bat.

Redfish - shipped version IPMI ver 1.92 - reused bootable USB, removed BIOS files and copied updated Redfish bin file and ADUpdate.exe. Renamed Redfish bin file to X10_327.bin to avoid long file names.

LSI - Followed the excellent guide https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...micro-x10sl7-f-motherboard.38884/#post-237489
LSI shipped version 15.00.00.00-IR - reused FAT32 USB, cleaned off previous files and copied contents of downloaded UEFI folder, disabled 2 BIOS items as per guide, boot, F11 select UEFI shell. At prompt type SMC2308T.NSH and wait/follow instructions.

NB - SAS Address 50030480:1CBC5500 requires input of last 9 characters, which is slightly off putting given the location of the : In my case I used 01CBC5500. Final version 20.00.04.00-IT

All seems to have gone smoothly. Thanks for the very useful guides and replies :)