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

[Mark Benson]

On 21 May 2009, at 15:13, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> What? OpenSolaris does run fine on this chipset, and I assume the  
> RealTek NICs are supported, Solaris supports ICH7R (non-RAID), and  
> GMA950 must be supported...

My experience is totally from the Little Falls 2 board (D945GCLF2).

> These are mature system chips, I would be floored if they aren't  
> supported under Solaris...

The NIC on mine isn't supported in out-of-the-box Sol10. I couldn't  
find the driver for it either. The main chipset components work okay,  
including the SATA and such-like but not supporting the NIC, one of  
*the* things I consider critical on a UNIX machine, was a party  
stopper for me. It's a shame because, for such a modest machine, it  
ran Solaris 10 REALLY well.

As an aside I don't think the audio worked either but I don't think  
that's such a biggie on a NAS server :)

Like I said it worked okay in OSol though, so it's no major loss.

> What about using a USB flash key for cache? The MB has a USB socket.

No idea, I guess if it'll treat it as a disk device in Solaris then  
it'll work. Would be an interesting experiment. Actually I know you  
can use USB sticks with ZFS and Sol10 because I saw some guy on a ZFS  
promo video in German do a stunt where he used 12 USB sticks as a  
storage array using ZFS.

I'd never considered that. I think you'd have to change the USB stick  
annually mind you to avoid any issues. I think SSD drives are probably  
a bit more tolerant and have longer lifespan than your average 14.99  
USB stick :)


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Mark Benson

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