Supermicro H8DAR-T BIOS Settings

We run a lot of Supermicro H8DAR-T motherboards in production. These are the BIOS settings that work well for us. I have not done a lot of tweaking trying to get more performance out of our systems with BIOS settings, since stability is key.

Note that unless specified here, we leave the settings at their default values. (Some of these settings are default values but documented because we need them set that way) Especially important options in BOLD.

Advanced->ACPI Settings->Advanced ACPI Settings
  ACPI 2.0                                     [No]
  ACPI APIC Support                            [Enabled]
  ACPI SRAT Table                              [Enabled]
  BIOS->AML ACPI Table                         [Enabled]
  Headless Mode                                [Enabled]
  OS Console Redirection                       [Always]

Advanced->AMD PowerNow Configuration
  PowerNow                                     [Disabled]

Advanced->Remote Access
  Remote Access                                [Enabled]
  Serial Port                                  [COM2]
  Serial Port Mode                             [19200,8,N,1]
  Flow Control                                 [None]
  Redirection After Post                       [Always]
  Terminal Type                                [vt100]
  UT-UTF8 Combo Keys                           [Enabled]
  SRedir Memory Display                        [No Delay]

Advanced->System Health->System Fan
  Fan Speed Control                            [1) Disable - Full Speed]

PCIPnP
  Plug and Play OS                             [No]
  PCI Latency                                  [64]
  Allocate IRQ to PCI VGA                      [Yes]
  Pallete Snooping                             [Disabled]
  PCI IDE BusMaster                            [Disabled]

Boot->Boot Device Priority
    1)  Floppy
    2)  PC-CD-244E   (cdrom)
    3)  MBA Slot 218 (first ethernet)
    4)  3Ware (or Onbard SATA)
    5)  MBA Slot 219 (second ethernet)

Chipset->NorthBridge->ECC Configuration
    DRAM ECC                                     [Enabled]
        MCA ECC Logging                          [Enabled]
        ECC Chipkill                             [Enabled]
        DRAM Scrub Redirect                      [Enabled]
        DRAM BG Scrub                            [163.8us]
    L2 Cache BG Scrub                            [ 10.2us]
    Data Cache BG Scrub                          [ 5.12us]

Chipset->NorthBridge->IOMMU Options
    IOMMU Mode                                   [Best Fit]
    Aperture Size                                [64MB]

Supermicro H8DAR-T version detection

The Supermicro H8DAR-T motherboard comes in (at least) two flavors. The differences that I know about between the two versions are:

* The version 2.01 board will run Opensolaris/Nexenta out of the box. This is because of a difference in the SATA controller hardware. The version 1.01 board will not run Opensolaris without an add-on controller card.

* The 1.01 and 2.01 boards use different hardware sensors (For temperature, fan speed, etc). We get sensor stats through our IPMI cards; because of this the IPMI cards need to be flashed to the specific version of the hardware. The IPMI cards do work for poweron/poweroff and console redirection without this specific firmware, only the sensors do not work if the IPMI firmware mis-matches the motherboard version.

Unfortunately, I do not see enough of a difference at POST time to be able to tell them apart. However, there are two ways I know of to do the detection.

1. With the cover of the machine off, the version can be seen in the back left corner of the board. (Will post pics later)

2. Under linux, use the "dmidecode" command. The system board uses "Handle 0x0002". What works well for me is "dmidecode |grep -A3 'Base Board' ". v1.01 boards report their Version as "1234567890" (way to go Supermicro!). v2.01 boards report as being Version "2.0". Examples:

v1board:~# dmidecode |grep -A3 "Base Board"
Base Board Information
Manufacturer: Supermicro
Product Name: H8DAR-T
Version: 1234567890


v2board:~# dmidecode |grep -A3 "Base Board"
Base Board Information
Manufacturer: Supermicro
Product Name: H8DAR-T
Version: 2.0