[geeks] Nifty NAS board (Atom-based FlexATX from Supermicro)

[Joshua Boyd]

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 09:32:40AM -0400, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> There is a brand-new Intel Atom 330-based MB out there that looks nice
> on several levels - the Supermicro X7SLA-H - a "FlexATX" MB.
> 
> What sets this board apart from other Atom-based MBs are the following:
> 
>  - Dual Realtek Gigabit Ethernet ports
>  - Dual memory slots (with 2 Gig limit, but dual-channel supported)
>  - Four ICH7R SATA ports (supports RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 under Windows)
>  - On-board USB "Type A" connector (use standard flash drive for boot media)
>  - One PCI-Express x8 slot
>  - One PCI-Express x4 slot (in an x8 socket)
>  - One PCI slot
>  - Atom 330 CPU (1.6 GHz, dual core, hyperthreading supported, faux
> quad-core, x64 supported but no Virtualization Support)
>  - Intel GMA 950 integrated video
> 
> And the price is around $135-175, depending on vendor (scarce at the
> moment, just released)

Have you looked at the Via Nano?  It is at the lower end of that price
range.  It doesn't have as many slots, but it does take more memory and
it has virtualization support.  It doesn't do dual core though, it does
do hyperthreading, and it has one 1 gig-e port and 2x sata.

http://www.compumusic.com/p532205.htm
 
I'd love to get one of each and test them both out under Solaris, Linux,
and maybe FreeNAS (which is starting to get ZFS support, BTW).

> MFG URL: http://supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/945/X7SLA.cfm?typ=H
> 
> This thing was made for a small server with lots of room for growth -
> I can see this as an ideal platform for Windows Home Server.
> 
> Wonder how it would do as a Solaris ZFS fileserver...

Hopefully very nice.
 
> Here's a perfect chassis for the above MBs (in tower form), it lists
> for about $100 including a 300 Watt PS from Supermicro:
> 
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811152123

I wouldn't call that perfect, but perfect might not exist.  The Chenbro
ES34069 chassis would be close to what I'd call perfect, but it is
Mini-ITX, not Flex-ATX.  However, perhaps adding a SATA card to a Via
Nano would go nicely in that chassis...

But hey, at least this time I'm not arguing that perfect would be a rack
mountable case.