production system: supermicro mboard X7DWE, need feedback

[therock112]

I am helping a friend build a production piaf server, anyone have any feedback on the following mboard from supermicro:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon1333/5400/X7DWE.cfm

planning on using a dual core xeon 2.8ghz cpu

4gb ecc ram

raid 1 hdd configuration

2 x sangoma 102DE (with hardware echo canceller)
first card for primary use, second card for backup only

90 sip phones, 2 call queues, with agents logging to queue, 4 foreign offices with sip phones and fxo/fxs adapter and 2 pri line from telco at main office

any comments, suggestions or potential roadblocks that you may have experienecd, I would like to know about it.....

tia

 

[tmo]

We use a similar config ... so, that should work except: don't use the onboard raid. these are not truly stable and you are better off getting a 3ware card or similar

 

[therock112]

hello tmo:

thanks for the info.

I am not a big fan of the onboard raid controllers, they are software raid and are a royal pain to get them to work with linux at times....maybe centos 5.1 supports them now perhaps, not sure, but centos 5 had some troubles with them.

I stick with adaptec, lsi or areca cards depending on how critical the system is going to be etc.

another member on these forums is having some troubles trying to get his supermicro system to play nice with rhino card http://pbxinaflash.com/community/threads/help-cant-get-rhino-card-on-its-own-irq.1415/?t=1415

thanks for posting back to this thread.

 

[Ksilebo]

Supermicro makes solid motherboards. I've built probably a couple hundred servers with them. You will need a special cable if you are not using a supermicro case. That SATA controller is relatively new, but is allegedly pretty high performance.

 

[foneman]

We are building 2 with the SM X7SBL-LN1 and will post.

 

[therock112]

perhaps a sticky or something could be for the benfit of all where users who have had a lot of trouble with specific hardware can post the model # and other pertinent info.....and what they did or did not do to resolve the issue.

so folkswho are planning to build a system for oneself or for a customer, could check thru that sticky to make sure that the hardware they are buying doesnt already have a known issue with a digital/analog card with a specific motherboard, raid controller, etc etc.