[geeks] Dell T105 server arrives

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Apr 2, 2008, at 11:57 , Lionel Peterson wrote:

> Have you tried the driver I mentioned from the Broadcom website?  
> They list it as the driver for NetXtreme Ethernet chips for Solaris  
> and was released in late 2007... I plan to try it later, but I'm  
> curious of your successes (or lack thereof).

Sorry, I forgot.

That's where I got the driver I have.

It was for Solaris 8.

> I plan to try Ubuntu Server x64, Solaris and Windows Server 2008 on  
> my machine before I finalize it. I may go crazy and put a  
> virtualization "core" on the server and run various OSs virtually.

I might do the same.

Solaris is much improved, but I have a hard time getting over the  
ugliness of Sun's organization and patching system.

The BSD systems are a lot cleaner and easier to administrate.

However, I really like zones.

I think my ideal OS would be NetBSD with modern SMP support and zones,  
but that's not going to happen soon it seems.

> This will (likely) be my "office" VM box (distinct from my "data  
> center" VM server, the 8 core server I got a few months ago).

For me this is replacing 4 other servers, Sun stuff, so it will be  
doing DNS, mail, and a little of everything.

One reason Solaris is attractive is putting my database servers in a  
zone, and separating other services.

It's not just security, it also makes you utilize configurations that  
will work even if you later move servers to separate machines.

> Related question: Does Solaris have a capability to include/load  
> drivers during install for anything other than storage? It's not  
> been an issue for me before, but in Windows Server 2008 I think I  
> can make drivers available by putting them on a USB stick in a  
> directory called something like "/DRIVERS"...

I saw instructions for doing this with the Broadcom ethernet driver,  
so I assume the answer is yet.

However, I installed the driver after I finished installing Solaris,  
so I've not personally tested that.

-- 
"Where some they sell their dreams for small desires."