[rescue] SS 10 question and Ultra 10 question

[Joshua Boyd]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 11:30:36AM -0400, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> On Jul 30, 2009, at 9:59 AM, Joshua Boyd <jdboyd at jdboyd.net> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 07:43:35AM -0400, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>>
>>> The limitation is on the on-board controller, once you use another
>>> controller you avoid that limitation. You could go SCSI with a 300 Gig
>>> drive, but the cost would be prohibitive, IMHO. You can't boot off a SATA
>>> controller, the OPENBOOT can't boot from it.
>>
>> If he plans to stick with Solaris, I don't believe there is any SATA
>> card he can use in the computer that will work.
>
> Ignoring cost, there must be a card, either SAS or SATA, that works on 
> UltraSPARC - what controller chips are in the UltraSPARC servers that use 
> SATA/SAS drives?

There is a SAS card that works on UltraSPARC, just not in the U5/U10.
Certain LSI cards, such as the 3800X will work in numerous other
UltraSPARC machines such as the U80.  It requires a 3.3V slot while the
U5/U10 are 5V.

The T1000 and T2000 use a LSI chip I believe.

>> This is one of my major peeves with Solaris.  Why can't they make the
>> SATA drivers from the AMD64 version work on SPARC?  Why hasn't some hacker 
>> done this?
>
> The interest in such a project is, at best, minimal outside a few pockets 
> of SPARC fans... The performance of SATA and x86 multi-core, multi-GHz CPUs 
> trounce most "classic" SPARC boxes... IMHO, YMMV...

And yet people have made SPARC drivers for various NICs and soundcards,
and people using Solaris 10/SPARC for workstations is probably even more
of a minority compared to the people who could use SATA.

Still, I'm sure that is part of the reason.

> Didn't someone here have SATA on a U30 for storage, not as bootable media? 
> I think I read that a couple years ago..

Brian Hechinger has SATA in a U80 using the LSI SAS controller that
won't work in a U5/U10.