> On Nov 5, 2014, at 12:31 PM, Keith Wesolowski via smartos-discuss > <[email protected]> wrote: > > 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?
Well, yeah. > > 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. Generally, this is true not just of SmartOS, but of illumos. There are some things that support power efficiency (reducing power consumption), but it hasn’t been a core focus of illumos for quite some time (if ever — although once upon a time Solaris led the market here — but that was decades ago back in the first versions of EnergyStar). That said, if *CPU* power consumption is a major factor, generally this is mostly automatic, as modern CPUs generally “race” to complete work so that they can enter deeper C states. However, deep C states have been known to be the cause of many problems in certain types of network appliance configurations, to the point that best practice is often to disable deep C states. (Again, in a data center environment, this isn’t a big deal.) > >> 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 disagree with this assessment about RealTek. While historically (back in the 10Mbps and to a lesser extent the 100 Mbps days) RealTek parts were tragically bad, in general the gigabit parts are quite reliable. They are simple, and lack many of the more advanced features that more expensive offerings from Intel and Broadcom provide, but if you’re just looking for connectivity, these are actually very reliable. (Much more so than the other budget chip company — Marvell — in my opinion. Marvell is the only company I know who’s actually figured out how to make a viable business model out of selling parts that are most often tragically broken and non-compliant with the various standards to which they *claim* conformance.) I have some non-trivial experience in the code for these drivers, so I know whereof I speak. :-) > >> 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. I *do* concur with that. In general, consumer grade boards tend to have lots of random parts on them, and the consumer mfgs are often quite “liberal” in changing suppliers, often without updating datasheets. There is an excellent chance that it will Just Work, but you need to test it yourself. - Garrett > > > ------------------------------------------- > smartos-discuss > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/184463/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/184463/22103350-51080293 > Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ------------------------------------------- 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
