Riverbed CX-770 $30BO

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Samir

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Jul 21, 2017
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HSV and SFO
These will be such great router boxes since 4GB ecc udimms are cheap and a simple mirrored ssd setup and power supply will have this purring nicely. I wonder how many pps it can push?
 
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Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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It appears that these are 100MBs only.
 
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Kamilion

New Member
Jul 21, 2022
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i wonder how does one interface with the MegaRAC card?

Just the usual ipmitool once you've gotten a distro loaded.
Force a password change with `ipmitool user set password 2 ADMIN` or your choice of password.
After that, `ipmitool lan print` to discover it's IP, and open it with a web browser to get iKVM access at up to 1280x1024. Lubuntu works fine. Gnome and KDE are laggy due to the Matrox M200 driver having acceleration disabled a while back. Performance is beyond acceptable with an AMDGPU on a riser from the PCIE slot, but you lose the network video ability. MegaRAC doesn't appear to be hobbled, and virtual media mounting works acceptably.
Edit: Seems I was thinking of a similar model from the vendor's, a 1U pizzabox, not this half-width 1U with ears.
Can confirm the AST1050 equipped does not do video, as other posters later in the thread mention. My Mistake.


Howdy, y'all. long time sth listener, first time poster. Work for one of them thar ebay sellers.

We should have at least thirty units listed soon; Sitting on a pallet right now, but we've got some prep work to do first.

They refer to this unit as the "Guppy".

We've got the units, power supplies, the 4GB and 8GB 1600Mhz ECC memory modules (which will be logo debranded), the MegaRAC IPMI modules, original DOM modules, SSDs and disks. (*ATA Secure Erased already)

I've found at least five different configurations, some with lesser xeons, some with fewer (or no) bypass ports, like hmartin's (OP's).

That variant is a central controller for commanding groups of the less unusual variant, Madhelp's (Bottom of page 1).

The most abundant have a intel 160GB SSD and a hitachi 320GB spinner mounted above the MegaRAC module.

Things I know about the platform so far: The bios is customized, there are at least three different images; examination of their own bootscripts indicate they flash it using "flashrom", and I've been on the lookout for the uncustomized Advantech firmware for the NAMB-3250 motherboard to be able to debrand the units for resale. If anyone happens to successfully dump a copy with flashrom; hit me up.

All three images I examined had menu entries in the setup to alter the bypass port configuration defaults. (you should switch them to non-bypass defaults for use with BSD/Linux.)

Advantech does have the bypass control scripts available for download. They don't offer a clean firmware image. Emails to them have gone unresponded to for ~3Y.

Other than that, the firmware doesn't seem to have hidden many, if any options. The units typically do not have a bios password applied (unlike most other 1U/2U supermicro variants this vendor uses) and will attempt to boot exclusively from a 9 pin USB2.0 header in the center of the board (which typically has either an ATP 4GB or 8GB SM3257EN USB flash controller on a DOM module.) that you'll probably want to disable by finding the "Dom Boot Only" option and disabling it, which allows you to customize the boot menu as you would normally.

There is a cisco-compatible RJ45 console port on the front, it defaults to 9600 baud; but you can change it to 115200 baud in the setup menu pretty quickly. We have an abundance of the included RJ45 to DB9 cable (Grey).

The PCI-E connector is fortunately standard, and I've successfully tested a few radeons using AMDGPU without much issue.
Beware of this vendor's shorter machine, "minnow", which *appears* to have an X1 slot (but is actually for the two port SATA riser!)

So, what kinds of configuration SKUs should I set up for the ebay listings?
Do you guys want them bare bones mix and match, or ready to power on with OpenWRT 21.03.3 installed?
Do we list SKUs with disks and Ubuntu Server 22.04? Or PFSense?
Do we toss in the console cable, or are people going to frown at the DB9 needing to pair it with an old board or a messy USB-chain-of-dongles?
(I use a cisco to type-c cable from amazon to serial terminal from my android. Is nice.)

I'd expect a diskless + DOM containing openwrt + 8GB DDR3 + megarac + power supply to be in the $75-95 range (as we offer 'free' shipping from california to continental US, baked into the listing price) and disks inclusive to be more like $135-155 range.

The unit I've been experimenting with is fully loaded with a 480GB SSD, 500GB WD black spinner, and 32GB across four 8GB sticks, runs ubuntu-server 22.04 with Xen 4.16 hypervisor. (kvm works too, of course.) OpenWRT works great as a inter-VM routing switch.


If anyone else has questions about the platform, I can try answering them. You'll also find me under the same nickname on github and gmail.
lspci dumps, or anything else of the sort, ask away.

stack-o-guppies.jpg
 
Last edited:

mrseth1

Member
Apr 19, 2016
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Anyone else see the giant reply by an ebay seller explaining a bunch that got deleted? If your there please post it back, lots of good info.
I saw it. You're right, it had a ton of good info in it, like the boot sequence and IPMI pass reset. Looks like there is going to be another flood of these on ebay soon from Cali. I think they said ~$75 - $100 including the power supply.
 
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mrseth1

Member
Apr 19, 2016
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Looks like I lucked out. I ordered and received two of them. One came with no drives, and the other came with 2 drives (160G SSD and a 320GB HDD). Both have 4GB of ECC MEM. I plan to up the RAM to 32G and run vmware or proxmox as a firewall/router test mini lab. I don't have the power supplies yet so I have not booted them yet.
 

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NachoCDN

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Apr 18, 2016
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Anyone else see the giant reply by an ebay seller explaining a bunch that got deleted? If your there please post it back, lots of good info.
here is the information that was posted. hopefully i'm not spilling any critical info here:

Just the usual ipmitool once you've gotten a distro loaded.
Force a password change with `ipmitool user set password 2 ADMIN` or your choice of password.

Howdy, y'all. long time sth listener, first time poster. Work for one of them thar ebay sellers.

We should have at least thirty units listed soon; Sitting on a pallet right now, but we've got some prep work to do first.

They refer to this unit as the "Guppy".

We've got the units, power supplies, the 4GB and 8GB 1600Mhz ECC memory modules (which will be logo debranded), the MegaRAC IPMI modules, original DOM modules, SSDs and disks. (*ATA Secure Erased already)

I've found at least five different configurations, some with lesser xeons, some with fewer (or no) bypass ports.

The most abundant have a intel 160GB SSD and a hitachi 320GB spinner mounted above the MegaRAC module.

Things I know about the platform so far: The bios is customized, there are at least three different images; examination of their own bootscripts indicate they flash it using "flashrom", and I've been on the lookout for the uncustomized Advantech firmware for the NAMB-3260 motherboard to be able to debrand the units for resale.

All three images I examined had menu entries in the setup to alter the bypass port configuration defaults. (you should switch them to non-bypass defaults for use with BSD/Linux.)

Advantech does have the bypass control scripts available for download. They don't offer a clean firmware image. Emails to them have gone unresponded to for ~3Y.

Other than that, the firmware doesn't seem to have hidden many, if any options. The units typically do not have a bios password applied (unlike most other 1U/2U supermicro variants this vendor uses) and will attempt to boot exclusively from a 9 pin USB2.0 header in the center of the board (which typically has either an ATP 4GB or 8GB SM3257EN USB flash controller on a DOM module.

There is a cisco-compatible RJ45 console port on the front, it defaults to 9600 baud; but you can change it to 115200 baud in the setup menu pretty quickly. We have an abundance of the included RJ45 to DB9 cable (Grey).

The PCI-E connector is fortunately standard, and I've successfully tested a few radeons using AMDGPU without much issue.
Beware of this vendor's shorter machine, "minnow", which *appears* to have an X1 slot (but is actually for the two port SATA riser!)

So, what kinds of configuration SKUs should I set up for the ebay listings?
Do you guys want them bare bones mix and match, or ready to power on with OpenWRT 21.03.3 installed?
Do we list SKUs with disks and Ubuntu Server 22.04? Or PFSense?

I'd expect a diskless + DOM containing openwrt + 8GB DDR3 + megarac + power supply to be in the $75-95 range (as we offer 'free' shipping from california to continental US, baked into the listing price) and disks inclusive to be more like $135-155 range.
 

Samir

Post Liker and Deal Hunter Extraordinaire!
Jul 21, 2017
3,257
1,445
113
49
HSV and SFO
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