# Driver support for FreeBSD on Dell R420



## dangerzone9k (Dec 2, 2014)

Hi all,

I am looking to purchase a Dell R420 server and I need to know if FreeBSD drivers will support it. I reached out to Dell chat support and the person didn't know.

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/poweredge-r420/drivers

In the following link I did not see FreeBSD listed for OS.

Any help would be great!


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## abishai (Dec 2, 2014)

Actually, it's better to find (un)official Dell support forum. But if asking for help here, I'd suggest to find information about RAID and NICs and find if they are supported by FreeBSD. Other components should be OK.


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## rmoe (Dec 2, 2014)

While I do not know that particular model, based on my experience with diverse manufacturer's servers ...

_Generally_ _speaking_, almost any (Intel-based) server that can run _L_inux can also run FreeBSD. But there are quite some buts, for instance manufacturer specific "add-ons", in particular firmware loaders and board/system management utilities. Some manufacturers have java based utilities which usually also work fine on FreeBSD.

Another "but" is that in most cases one can't talk about any "box X" (like "PowerEdge R420") because usually there are many configuration variants, for instance with or w/o without RAID hardware (which again comes in diverse versions/chipsets/features).

In other words: the quality of the advise we can offer is limited by the quality of your question. (Hint: Make it _easy_ for us to answer! Needing to read through a _L_inux drivers list or marketing material and needing to find the relevant information ourselves, will strongly limit the inclination to help you).

So, as a reasonable minimum, tell us - in technical terms, not in the vendors marketing lingo - the exact and full specification of the box/configuration you intend to purchase. Ideally you'd also tell us about the box' intended role and the (technical) context  (like: "will be used for Apache, PHP in a hosting environment with dual 100Mb links. ILO management available on board and desired").


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## dangerzone9k (Dec 2, 2014)

The server is going to have dual 2.20 GHz processors w/ with 6 cores and with 8 GB RAM each. For storage it's going to have (2) 2TB 7.2 RPM SATA HDDs and for RAID it's either going to have no RAID or RAID 0.

I am going to use this server as a Snort sensor for internal and external packet capture.


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## Terry_Kennedy (Dec 4, 2014)

dangerzone9k said:


> Hi all,
> 
> I am looking to purchase a Dell R420 server and I need to know if FreeBSD drivers will support it. I reached out to Dell chat support and the person didn't know.


I have been running various Dell PowerEdge servers with FreeBSD for years with very few problems (ancient DRAC cards were sort of flakey as they needed kernel PPP support, which went away sometime around FreeBSD 7).

The closest thing I have to your R420 is an R710 (prior generation). These work well with FreeBSD, though you will need to boot from CD (CDU + SUU) to update some firmware. I am running PERC H700 RAID cards and these also have good FreeBSD support. I occasionally blog about this stuff, for example here and here. I have a pending post documenting how to control the front panel LCD and get the FreeBSD build info into the "Operating System" section displayed on the DRAC web page.

Feel free to ask me here (or via PM) about any specific issues.


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