FreeBSD on a rackserver?

mariourk

mariourk

I'm wondering what precautions I should take, If I wanted to install FreeBSD on a brand new rackserver. What should I look for and how can I be certain all the hardware (like NIC's) will work? I mean, it's a bit embarrassing if I would buy an expensive rackserver, install FreeBSD on it, only to find out I can't hook it up to the network, because the NIC's aren't supported.

Anyone who has some experience in this area?
 
In my experience it's pretty much impossible to determine exacly what kind of hardware is in a rackserver, before actually having one. So, it's nice to know that FreeBSD 9.0 supports the Adaptec SATA RAID 21610SA, but it won't help me much if I cannot determine what a certain rackserver is using. :\

And no, I don't have any plans to buy a rackserver any time soon. So, I don't have my eyes on any model right now. I'm just trying to get an idea of what to to, if one of our servers is being replaced in the future and I wanted to use the opportunity switch to FreeBSD.

Btw, your link isn't working, arapaima.
 
Whatever hardware you want to buy, try to run (from a Live-CD)

[CMD=""]pciconf -lv[/CMD]

From the PCI-ID listing you can see, if the hardware is supported well. The vendor should also be able to give you this listing.
 
IMO a decent rackserver supplier should be able to provide you with this kind of information, down to the exact PCI IDs used if possible, because especially in this market you can expect customers to buy hardware with a specific operating system in mind.
 
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