So I'm looking to build a home disk server (with some database and web activity, and email) using ZFS and hence Solaris, and I'm finding it hard to locate hardware that's known to work.
I need a tower server, and something with office-level rather than lab-level noise output. I need an absolute minimum of 4 3.5" SATA-II hot-swap bays, and really want 5, and wouldn't mind 8; plus of course a suitable controller. I don't desperately need redundant power or fans, though I wouldn't mind. I'd kinda like gigabit ethernet, but hardware at this level tends to come with that these days. I don't especially need dual ethernets. I tend to prefer AMD, and I understand Solaris and ZFS like Opterons anyway. Oh, I do want ECC memory. I want room to expand the memory for sure, and maybe the CPU (like a dual-processor MB configured with just one processor to begin with). And of course it's for a home server, so I'd like to buy it for about $1.98. Okay, so I'm going to have to give a little on this one. I'm actually able to talk about more like $2000 for a single-processor system with 2GB RAM and say 4x250GB disks plus a boot disk, though it hurts me to say so. So it looks like I need the Supermicro AW-4020C (http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/system/Tower/4020/AW-4020C-T.cfm), which is their H8DCe motherboard, which uses the nvidia proforce 2050 and proforce 2200 for the SATA (I think those are big integrated chips doing many things, not *just* the SATA). But I can't find any of the obvious IDs in the HCL, and Supermicro doesn't seem to bother testing against Solaris (at least I've never found it on one fo their OS support lists; but I *have* found some older Supermicro models on the HCL). Are there other similar models that are known to work with Solaris? Am I somehow misunderstanding the HCL, or misusing the search, and that model is sitting there waiting for me? Are there tricks to reading between the lines that I don't know that tell me this system definitely would, or definitely wouldn't, work? How big a risk is there that a randomly chosen system won't run Solaris these days? This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
