I've got a PE860 that I installed PF Sense on when it first came in (four or five months ago?), just to see if it would boot and allow me to load up. It went just fine. I've since moved it into doing other things though, so I can't test it further for you - and I didn't stress it at all, just wanted to get a base compatibility answer.
________________________________ From: Vivek Khera [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 2:38 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [pfSense Support] DELL PE860 + PFSense On Jan 24, 2007, at 12:48 AM, Mark Wass wrote: Hi All I want to put PFSense on a DELL PE 860 and just want to make sure it's going to run. I know this is an overkill for performance. when that's basically the *minumum* 1U server you can get from dell, what choice do you have :-) I just ordered up a pair of these boxes to use as mail sending servers running FreeBSD 6.1. They arrive friday, so I'll find out how they work then. :-) My biggest concerns are the following 1. PE 860 has 250GB SATA II Disk, will PFSense load on to this ok? Dell tends to use intel based controllers, and those are well supported in FreeBSD, so I expect it to work out just fine. I have had success with the PE1450 which also has SATA drives. 2. On board NIC's are Broadcom 5721J's will they work? I scanned the source code for the bge driver and the 5721 has a device code in the probe sequence. How that might differ from an 5721J I don't know.... i'm crossing my fingers it will work. If not, then I just disable that and get a dual port intel server NIC for $150 and call it a day. 3. I want to put an extra Intel Pro/1000 PCIe Dual NIC in the server, will this NIC work with PFSense. I'll bet yes, since intel NICs are probably some of the best supported in FreeBSD. Is anybody else using a PE8860 with PFSense? No, but our office one runs on a PE SC400 which is about 3 years old, and works great. I have about 20 different dell server boxes and they all run FreeBSD with exactly one issue: the bge controller and disk controller on the PE800 (SATA RAID card) disagree violently with each other, resulting in extreme slow network and disk performance. Disabling the bge NIC and replacing with an Intel server NIC PCI card solved that nicely. If you wait until monday I can let you know if the PE860 boots freebsd. :-)
