FreeBSD/Dell 11th Gen Servers

My recomendation is to install an Intel PCIe card in these systems. The support for the on board NetXtream II cards is not very good if:

• You run jumbo frames
• You handle large numbers of small frames at line rate.

Here are the results of my initial tests with FreeBSD 7.1 (With bce driver from HEAD).

The tests are:

• PXE Boot into installer.
• Boot into multi user mode.
• NIC Functions correctly.

Contents 1 R710 (2U) 2 R610 (1U) 3 R410 (1U) 4 M610 (Blade)

R710 (2U)

Test	Result
PXE	Boots and Installs fine
Boot	Boots post install correctly.
Nic Function	Works

R610 (1U)

Test	Result
PXE	One chassis booted and installed correctly others hang at various points while the PXE loader is loading the install image.
Boot	Boots post install correctly.
Nic Function	Firmware update will make the nic function (tested version 5.0.9) initially, subsequent reboots cause the failure to resurface. Related PRs: PR/125863 PR/134788

R410 (1U)

Test	Result
PXE	Randomly fails to load full PXE image. Once image loads correctly install completes.
Boot	Boots post install correctly.
Nic Function	Seems to be working correctly.

M610 (Blade)

None functional network due to unsupported BCE SerDes PHY revision see these prs:

• PR/134658
• PR/139761
• PR/136417
• PR/118238