[SDBUG] OpenBSD on Dell issues ?

[Ben Lovett]

On Thu, Aug 02, 2007 at 01:55:00PM -0700, Michael J McCafferty 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 still believe you can do this with OpenBSD .. Get good NIC's, such
as em(4), bge(4), bnx(4) ..

> 	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 ?

I haven't run anything such as this (but I wish .. colo box is
aging, and a 1950 or 2950 would do the trick nicely). I'd suggest
the mfi(4) (the PERC 5/i) over mpi(4).

> 	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 ? 

As Can said, the above card is supported by bnx(4). According to
someone I know, and whose opinion I trust, HW is great, but he believes
the driver needs work.

I'd second the opinion that you should run 4.2-beta, atleast until
4.2 is released. During the last hackathon there were numerous
improvements made to the stack, improving performance dramatically.
See http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070528213858
for more information.

> 	A beer for useful input ! Say, isn't there a meeting tonight ?

I wish I was there tonight.. Have fun!

Ben