# FreeBSD performance with new intel i3/i5 core processors



## okasion (Mar 18, 2010)

Hi guys,

Our small hosting company is planning on buying some intel i3 and i5 core processors, and I am the main sysadmin right now; I have googled a little but cannot found reliable information about this: can we deploy FreeBSD 7.2 on intel i3/i5 core servers? and aside this question, does anyone know if we can install cPanel WHM on them?

Sorry but I am not familiar with these processors yet, I dont even know if they use a special architecture or something else.

Thanks.


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## jem (Mar 18, 2010)

i3/i5 aren't anything special -  they're standard amd64 arch.  I've been running 8.0-RELEASE/amd64 on an i5 for for a few months.


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## overmind (Mar 18, 2010)

Basically make sure that motherboard you've selected to purchase has support in FreeBSD for:
- network card
- sata drive
- acpi

I recommend you Intel network cards (you should detect it as em0 ... )

Also you might look for some features in bios to remotely reset the system if there's a problem.


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## okasion (Mar 18, 2010)

overmind said:
			
		

> Basically make sure that motherboard you've selected to purchase has support in FreeBSD for:
> - network card
> - sata drive
> - acpi
> ...



Thanks a lot to both of you guys.

What do you mean by booting the system remotely overmind? obviously you dont mean some obscure reboot shell command; I have no idea what kind of functions could give a specifically motherboard about booting "safely".


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## overmind (Mar 18, 2010)

There are some mother boards that have in BIOS: ASF (v.2.0 is ok I think). 
ASF reffers to remote mangement without an OS present.

If you only have few machines and those machines are where your company is (in the same plase) than there's no need for that.

But if your computers are remotely, is good to have a method of reseting (hardware reset) if something bad was happened.

For example you could build a server that knows to support network boot.

So in case a computer fails you will:
- enable on that server to offer network boot for problematic computer for his MAC address
- using that bios feature you reset the problem computer that will instead boot from network taking ip from your network  boot server
- you will then login to that problematic computer using that IP to check what the problem is: it might be a hard drive problem, but usualy is only a file system with a problem that can be fschecked. Also if you by mistake locked out of your firewall you can using this rescue boot image to mount your drive partition on the problematic computer and fix the problem.

The other easyer way to solve a problem on a remote server is to use a KVM over IP. That device is configured with an public IP, and that device is configured to
keyboard and monitor of your server. After you phone and ask for a reset (which can be done using that bios feature) you can login to KVM and you can see your console on your server.


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## fender0107401 (Mar 20, 2010)

i3/i5 is intel's em64t cpu and compatable with amd's amd64.

Generally, freebsd user call them amd64 but linux community always call them x86_64.

For hardware compatibility, check the corresponding release note.

For example, FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE Hardware Notes.


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## tingo (Mar 21, 2010)

Here is an i3 as an example:

```
FreeBSD 8.0-STABLE #1: Fri Mar 12 19:56:45 CET 2010
    [email]root@kg-v7.kg4.no[/email]:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC amd64
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU         540  @ 3.07GHz (3066.68-MHz K8-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0x20652  Stepping = 2
  Features=0xbfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE>
  Features2=0x98e3bd<SSE3,DTES64,MON,DS_CPL,VMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,POPCNT>
  AMD Features=0x28100800<SYSCALL,NX,RDTSCP,LM>
  AMD Features2=0x1<LAHF>
  TSC: P-state invariant
real memory  = 8589934592 (8192 MB)
avail memory = 8131264512 (7754 MB)
ACPI APIC Table: <120709 APIC1603>
FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 4 CPUs
FreeBSD/SMP: 1 package(s) x 2 core(s) x 2 SMT threads
 cpu0 (BSP): APIC ID:  0
 cpu1 (AP): APIC ID:  1
 cpu2 (AP): APIC ID:  4
 cpu3 (AP): APIC ID:  5
```


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## gcooper@ (Mar 21, 2010)

HP has their lights out technology; it seems relatively robust from what I've heard for remote access and management *shrugs*.


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