On 11/23/2012 5:50 AM, Edward Ned Harvey
(opensolarisisdeadlongliveopensolaris) wrote:
From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Jim Klimov
I wonder if it would make weird sense to get the boxes, forfeit the
cool-looking Fishworks, and install Solaris/OI/Nexenta/whatever to
get the most flexibility and bang for a buck from the owned hardware...
This is what we decided to do at work, and this is the reason why.
But we didn't buy the appliance-branded boxes; we just bought normal servers
running solaris.
I gave up and am now buying HP-branded hardware for running Solaris on
it. Particularly if you get off-lease used hardware (for which, HP is
still very happy to let you buy a HW support contract), it's cheap, and
HP has a lot of Solaris drivers for their branded stuff. Their whole
SmartArray line of adapters has much better Solaris driver coverage than
the generic stuff or the equivalent IBM or Dell items.
For instance, I just got a couple of DL380 G5 systems with dual
Harpertown CPUs, fully loaded with 8 2.5" SAS drives and 32GB of RAM,
for about $800 total. You can attach their MSA30/50/70-series (or
DS2700-series, if you want new) as dumb JBODs via SAS, and the nice
SmartArray controllers have 1GB of NVRAM, which is sufficient for many
purposes, so you don't even have cough up the dough for a nice ZIL SSD.
HP even made a sweet little "appliance" thing that was designed for
Windows, but happens to run Solaris really, really well. The DL320s
(the "s" is part of the model designation). 14x 3.5" SAS/SATA hot swap
bays, a Xeon 3070 dual-core CPU, SmartArray controller, 2 x GB Nic, LOM,
and a free 1x PCI-E expansion slot. The only drawback is that it only
takes up to 8GB of RAM. It makes a *fabulous* little backup system for
logs and stuff, and it's under about $2000 even after you splurge for
1TB drives and an SSD for the thing.
I am in the market for something newer than that, though. Anyone know
what HP's using as a replacement for the DL320s?
-Erik
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