Introduction
Intel® Server Board SE8500HW4
Revision
1.5
6
1. Introduction
This document is intended to provide users of the Intel
®
Server Board SE8500HW4 with a guide
to the different operating systems (OSes), adapter cards, and peripherals tested by Intel on this
platform.
This document will continue to be updated as new add-in cards, peripherals, and operating
systems are tested or until the SE8500HW4 is no longer in production. Each new release of the
document will present updated information as well as continue to provide the information from
previous releases.
Intel will only provide support to those add-in cards and peripherals under the specified system
configuration (system BIOS and firmware) and operating systems and versions to which they
were tested.
1.1 Test
Overview
Testing performed on the SE8500HW4 is classified under two separate categories: compatibility
testing and stress testing.
1.1.1 Compatibility
Testing
Basic compatibility testing is performed with each supported operating system. Basic
compatibility testing validates that the server can be used to install the operating system and the
base hardware feature set is functional. A small set of peripherals is used for installation
purposes only. No add-in cards are tested. Testing may include network connectivity and
running of proprietary and industry standard test suites.
The latest version of an operating system signifies the latest supported version
at the time of the actual test run. Each new release of this document may have
a newly supported release of a given operating system. Previous releases of a
supported operating system may not be tested beyond the basic compatibility
test process.
1.1.2 Stress
Testing
Stress testing is performed only on the most current release of a supported operating system at
the time of a given validation run. The stress testing process consists of three areas: base
platform, minimum stress testing, and full stress testing.
Base platform
: Each base platform will successfully install a given operating system,
successfully run a disk stress test, and successfully run a network stress test.
Minimum stress testing
: Multiple adapter validation (MAV) testing uses configurations and test
suites to gain an accurate view of how the server performs under varying complex
configurations while interacting with network clients. All slots are populated with adapters that
are running I/O (network, Fibre Channel, SCSI traffic). In conjunction with I/O traffic, a workload
is run in parallel to consume processor and memory bandwidth. Each configuration is tested
for at least 12 hours.
