On Wed, Nov 05, 2014 at 08:50:38PM +0100, Christopher J. Ruwe via smartos-discuss wrote:
> I notices that one supplier > (http://www.polywell.com/us/oem/ION4-10B.asp) advertises Solaris as an > option for Intel NM70 chipset, may I conclude that the boards from > Gigabyte would work? You may, but you probably shouldn't, at least not from that. We're not Solaris, and even if we were, I wouldn't take someone's word for it, especially without a specific version they can prove they tested and a list of specific features/functions that is verified working. Likewise "FreeBSD". Really? So I can run FreeBSD 4 on that board? What about 5? This is sloppy, and if they're sloppy about versions and functions, who's to say they weren't just sloppy about the whole thing and listed every x86 OS they'd heard of? Also, SmartOS doesn't have much in the way of advanced power management features, and the few features it does have from illumos either are or likely will in the future be disabled. If your primary concern is energy consumption, SmartOS probably isn't the right OS for you. The operational model behind SmartOS is scale-out infrastructure; in that model, if you are able to power down components without affecting performance, you will be much better off increasing tenancy (and revenue) and reducing fleet size than with that 2% reduction in per-node current draw. > Network seems to be Realtek RTL8111F (heise.de claims so), which is > mentioned as supported on Openindianas HCL > (http://wiki.openindiana.org/oi/Motherboards) RealTek is the worst of the worst, and not only are they the worst NICs on the market, they're also the go-to choice of system vendors whose main goal is cutting every last cent of cost that they can and still claim a working system. That makes it a good indicator of poor quality all around. As for the part itself, changes to internal workings without changes to PCI ID, much less marketing model name, are common for RealTek. It probably works, but it's a crapshoot, and even when RealTek's parts work, they rarely work without problems. Normally if this were the only negative I'd say just stick a $50 Intel NIC in there, but this thing doesn't have a PCIe slot and you're obsessing over power anyway. > I'd really appreciated some opinions. Mine is that if this thing has the paper specs you want, you should buy it from someone who accepts returns without a restocking fee. When it comes to consumer-grade equipment, it's always a crapshoot no matter what experience anyone else has had. It's probably 70% this thing will boot and link to the network, but you won't know until you try. ------------------------------------------- smartos-discuss Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/184463/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/184463/25769125-55cfbc00 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=25769125&id_secret=25769125-7688e9fb Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
