Weldon Dodd wrote:
I'd like to set up a home fileserver to centrally manage all my important
documents and files and backups. I'm pretty technical, but more of a Cisco IOS
guy than a Solaris admin or Unix whiz. I need some advice on how to setup the
hardware for this box...
My choices are to use an old Dell PowerEdge 2200 server that has two PII Xeons
(300MHz) with 128MBRAM, a Dell Dimension 4100 (1GHz P3, 512MB RAM) or to build
a new box with a spare ATX case I've got. I've got two 250GB SATA drives that I
would use and I want to add two or three more 250GB drives to create a RAIDZ
set.
My first inclination is that I would be better off to buy a new motherboard
that has SATA ports, Gig-E, etc. Install 1GB of RAM (I hear RAIDZ likes RAM)
and be done.
Since this box will only be a fileserver, can anyone recommend an inexpensive
motherboard with solid Solaris support? The Asus P5B-E is available open-box
from newegg.com for about $120. This motherboard has 6 internal SATA ports and
1 PATA port that I could use for the boot drive. I thought I might pair that
board with a P4 Prescott for $85 since I probably don't need dual cores.
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813131070R
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16819116230
Add in RAM, and I'm at $300 for a very nice MB, CPU, RAM setup. But the main
question is...
will this play nice with Solaris 10?
Skip the 2x300 Mhz machine.
The 1Ghz P3 is still usable, but will want more RAM.
I haven't used that Asus board and I don't know if the SATA controllers
will work in PATA mode; some don't.
If you can, use a 64 bit CPU. AMD mobos generally work pretty
well; the NVidia chipsets seem to be pretty well supported and
the Hypertransport works nicely for memory bandwidth intensive
loads such as zfs. ZFS likes RAM.
If you're going to use small drives (250 GB are now small :-)),
plan on a proper case & PS that has room for growth.
- Bart
--
Bart Smaalders Solaris Kernel Performance
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://blogs.sun.com/barts
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