[SDBUG] OpenBSD on Dell issues ?

[Can Erkin Acar]

On 8/2/07, Michael J McCafferty <mike at m5computersecurity.com> wrote:
> All,
> 	I am am on the verge of pulling the trigger on a hardware buy for some
> new firewalls to run OpenBSD 4.1, PF, CARP, pfsync. As we have discussed
> at the SDBUG meetings in the past, I have issues with interrupts on the
> CPU when the packets per second get high.
> 	I am replacing the current hardware within 2 weeks. The current system
> was installed when it was expected to handle 10 to 20 Mbps peak and
> about 2 to 5Mbps average. I now need a setup that can handle 20 to
> 50Mbps average now, with peaks to 200Mbps and future growth to several
> hundred Mbps peak at which time I assume that unless there is some major
> advance in servers/PCs/x86_64 architecture, I will have to go to ASIC
> based devices (ie: Netscreens, etc) and not be able to use my beloved
> PF. But I digress... what I really need to know is:

I have not used one, but here are some comments,
First of all, for network performance, you should try -current,
(it is in 4.2-beta now) there are many network performance
improvements done after 4.1.

> 	Is anyone currently running OpenBSD on Dell 1950s with the SAS 5/i
> SATA/SAS controller ? Any problems ? The Dell dude I spoke to said there
> may be issues with FreeBSD and the disk controller.. but that he only
> heard that some place and has no details on that. Or shall I use the
> PERC 5/i controller instead ?

There are threads on misc@ that suggest that it should work fine.

see for instance the following thread:
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=117551048515741&w=2

PERC 5/i uses the mfi(4) driver and SAS 5/iR uses the mpi(4) driver
with the mfi driver you can get raid status information through the bio(4)
framework.

> 	Is anyone using Intel PCIe Gig NICs ? I have been using the dual-port
> Intel GigE NICs for PCI/PCI-X, but not PCIe. Any known issues ?
> 	The system comes with Dual Embedded Broadcom NetXtreme II 5708 Gigabit
> interfaces. Will these be usable under OpenBSD 4.1 ?

These are bnx(4) they are usable as far as I know.

Can

> 	A beer for useful input ! Say, isn't there a meeting tonight ?
>
> Thank you !
> Mike
>
>
> --
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> Michael J. McCafferty
> Principal, Security Engineer
> M5 Hosting
> http://www.m5hosting.com
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