I would love to go back to using shuttles. Actually, my ideal setup would be:
Shuttle XPC w/ 2x PCI-e x8 or x16 lanes 2x PCI-e eSATA cards (each with 4 eSATA port multiplier ports) then I could chain up to 8 enclosures off a single small, nearly silent host machine. 8 enclosures x 5 drives = 40 drives... and it leaves open the possibility to change enclosures and find the quietest ones too. I got tired of having large beefy machines a while ago. Problem is, eSATA/PMP support isn't very mature yet even in opensolaris. I would be open to building a 5 drive mini-NAS box using ZFS, if I had more money to throw on ordering (and possibly returning, depending on if it worked or not) the right equipment. There's a variety of components I've been monitoring for just such a project, but I am wary due to hardware compatibility concerns. I am not sure I can find small enough components that will allow for 4 gigs of ram, silence, proper heat disappation and a boot environment for Solaris. Also, that solves the hardware/main OS piece; creating some sort of fun web-based UI and making some sort of appliance out of it would be a great next step. Sun should totally be looking into ZFS-based small business/home NAS boxes. Like the ReadyNAS style - basically just 5 drives, and somehow work with a case manufacturer to get a chassis that can fit a decent chip in there worthy of powering ZFS/CIFS/NFS and related stuff, a 64bit OS, 4 gig ram etc. So far I've found the Chenbro 4 drive one, I built it, it's quiet and neat and all, but it's only 32-bit, I think it maxes out at 2 gig ram, etc. The VIA stuff is cool too because the current generation comes with onboard crypto which is -amazingly- fast, and would be great in combination with ZFS crypto (think about all those dentist, doctor offices, banking/financial institutions, etc which need workstation and backup storage... I see a -huge- market there myself, and crypto would meet the HIPPA and financial privacy needs), snapshots would probably be damn useful for all of them too! This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
