Comment by yjftsjthsd-h

One thing I ran across when trying to figure this out previously - while some firmware is undoubtably dumb, a decent amount of it was that it was doing a lot more than typical PC firmware.

For instance, the slow RAM check POST I was experiencing is because it was also doing a quick single pass memory test. Consumer firmware goes ‘meh, whatever’.

Disk spin up, it was also staging out the disk power ups so that it didn’t kill the PSU - not a concern if you have 3-4 drives. But definitely a concern if you have 20.

Also, the raid controller was running basic SMART tests and the like. Which consumer stuff typically doesn’t.

Now how much any of this is worthwhile depends on the use case of course. ‘Farm of cheap PCs’ type cloud hosting environments, most these types of conditions get handled by software, and it doesn’t matter much if any single box is half broken.

If you have one big box serving a bunch of key infra, and reboot it periodically as part of ‘scheduled maintenance’ (aka old school on prem), then it does.

lazide a day ago

It takes awhile to enumerate a couple TB worth of RAM dimms and 20+ disks.

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yjftsjthsd-h a day ago

Yeah, it was somewhat understandable. I also suspect the firmware was... let's say underoptimized, but I agree that the task is truly not trivial.

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- lazide 21 hours ago
  
  One thing I ran across when trying to figure this out previously - while some firmware is undoubtably dumb, a decent amount of it was that it was doing a lot more than typical PC firmware.
  For instance, the slow RAM check POST I was experiencing is because it was also doing a quick single pass memory test. Consumer firmware goes ‘meh, whatever’.
  Disk spin up, it was also staging out the disk power ups so that it didn’t kill the PSU - not a concern if you have 3-4 drives. But definitely a concern if you have 20.
  Also, the raid controller was running basic SMART tests and the like. Which consumer stuff typically doesn’t.
  Now how much any of this is worthwhile depends on the use case of course. ‘Farm of cheap PCs’ type cloud hosting environments, most these types of conditions get handled by software, and it doesn’t matter much if any single box is half broken.
  If you have one big box serving a bunch of key infra, and reboot it periodically as part of ‘scheduled maintenance’ (aka old school on prem), then it does.
  
  Reply View | 0 replies