A small conglomerate of E450/Solaris 10 Questions!
To whom it shall concern or can just help out:
Solaris 10 Questions
If I wish to run an iSCSI target under Solaris 10, will GA do it or do I need the Express verison of Solaris 10 (for an E450, SPARC)?
If the GA version of Solaris 10 supports iSCSI targets, how capable is it to socialize that with ZFS in combination?
Can Solaris 10 (for SPARC) support any IDE PCI cards on the E450?
Can Solaris 10 (for SPARC) support any USB PCI cards on the E450?
Can Solaris 10 (for SPARC) support any FireWire (1394) PCI cards on the E450?
Other than Solaris Express being more experimental than the GA version, how problematic is it to run Express vice the GA in terms of daily reliability?
Taking a presumptive position that Solaris 10 Express or GA allows for an iSCSI target capability (with or without ZFS inclusive thereto) has anyone attempted to connect to such an alleged Solaris iSCSI target successfully from MacOS using this initiator:
http://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product_detail.php?t=more&pi =11
E450 Questions
What DVD drives are support on the SCSI bus for an E450 to boot from for the purposes of asserting a DVD based Solaris 10 installation?
I am also looking for any of the following hardware (if you have it at a good price, do contact me offline at 310-358-0202, or cio@bh90210.net):
(a) DVD Drives
(b) Backplane hardware and cables requisite to increase the amount of DASD that can be installed in an E450 from 4 to 12 or 20
(c) RAM
(d) Processors
(e) Multi-port Ethernet cards
Thanks in advance!
Stuart
[1658 byte] By [
stuartbha] at [2007-11-27 11:16:07]
# 1
I have been running solaris 10 on an e450 for ages and it works fine. I slid the drive out of a Blade1000 to load the DVD.
HCL lists are available for the e450.
The backplane can be bought cheap to expand the drive number.
Not sure about any of the iscsi stuff.
Ebay ebay ebay for e450 gear.
On another note, the e450 is a beast weighting in around 300 pounds fully loaded. Sucks up more power than NY city on a hot day and can heat a fairly large building. Not to mention they sound like small airplanes.
I know they are one of the most interesting computer designs out there but unless you a glutten for slow processors *max 480 mhz* I would suggest you buy something a bit newer. One ultra45 would be better and hold more drive space and ram.
If you do like the old hardware and redundancy is not critical I would suggest getting a blade2000 off of ebay for around 600 dollars. Still big and beautiful but far far faster. I use a Blade1000 (wont die) and have firewire drives plugged into it for more space.
# 2
> I have been running solaris 10 on an e450 for ages
> and it works fine. I slid the drive out of a
> Blade1000 to load the DVD.
>
Which version (specifically) of Solaris 10 are you running?
GA?
Express?
Which month/year release?
Regarding the DVD:
An interesting solution, though I do not have a Blade1000 handy, so I will continue to look for a compatible DVD player I can use within the e450 for an inexpensive price, unless you are suggesting that a Blade1000 with a DVD is cheaper than a DVD for the e450. Are you suggesting such?
> HCL lists are available for the e450.
Perhaps you can suggest where I might find them sir?
That truly would be helpful, as I had presumed already that such lists were existent.
>
> The backplane can be bought cheap to expand the drive
> number.
Still investigating the part number, but yes, I'd imagine so. Do you perhaps know the part numer for this item sir?
>
> Not sure about any of the iscsi stuff.
Too bad, that was an important part of the information I was looking for.
>
> Ebay ebay ebay for e450 gear.
Once I know the part numbers, ebay will be a great tool for finding the hardware, I agree.
>
> On another note, the e450 is a beast weighting in
> around 300 pounds fully loaded. Sucks up more power
> than NY city on a hot day and can heat a fairly large
> building. Not to mention they sound like small
> airplanes.
>
I live in Vegas, electricity is burned out here in outrageous amounts on a daily basis.
Indeed, I am presuming that when they (I have two) are running during the winter, that I will be able to heat my 1895 sq foot house (or at least one deck of it).
> I know they are one of the most interesting computer
> designs out there but unless you a glutten for slow
> processors *max 480 mhz* I would suggest you buy
> something a bit newer. One ultra45 would be better
> and hold more drive space and ram.
>
Years in the computer industry and I will never understand why, when people ask technical questions others feel they are helping to say "replace your hardware", when indeed it is not broken and they are attempting to use it. I have to admit, you are not the first to do such a thing.
I understand you think there is something better, and honestly, I certainly am not inept enough to have not considered that, yet still I posted the query in the instant post asking about the e450.
Consider this: perhaps I was interested in using the e450 and getting the questions answered...nah...why would I want to do that?
> If you do like the old hardware and redundancy is not
> critical I would suggest getting a blade2000 off of
> ebay for around 600 dollars. Still big and beautiful
> but far far faster. I use a Blade1000 (wont die) and
> have firewire drives plugged into it for more space.
And what suggestion would you proffer if the $600 budget is not there?
Using the e450 perhaps? :)
Stuart
# 3
I have run 1/06 (I think that is right) and the most recent release on it.
This is all the GA releases.
HCL lists can be found in the sundocs. You can print out the entire manual as well.
docs.sun.com
Be very very careful on ebay. I have ended up with misslabeled processors and such. Many of the processors released during the e450's life have very slight differences that cause them not to work together. Also, I had problems getting the backplanes to be recognized (in fact one of them never was recognized). If and when you buy some make sure you get cables with them and that they are not toasted. Those ribbon cables break easily. Also, I found that the drive caddies were nearly as scarce as good processors and cost almost as much as the drives. Often the cheap deals on drives are the ones that do not have the caddie. The caddie is particular as well. All of the part numbers are in the manual.
Also be careful since each pci slot is different in those beasts.
As far as unsolicited advice...
Since you are using an e450 I thought you may want to avoid wasting money....
I thought that keeping the e450 as my main box would be cheapest too but I found I was spending far too much trying to get it to do what I wanted. We now use it as a sunray server and mysql database machine.
1) To run 20 drives in an e450 it is suggested you have all three power supplies running and that means 1500 watts.
2. The problem with the e450 is the parts are so large that even if you get the backplane for 20 bucks on ebay shipping still puts it up to 40 dollars. You will need 2 of them (if I remember correctly) fo put in the 20 drives, so there is 80dollars right there. Plus, you will need the scsi cards for the backplanes, again more costs. Ram is insanely expensive and not too easy to find in reasonable quantities (same issue for the blade1000 though). You can find it really cheap but they are always the very small dimms and you max out at 1-2 gbs that way. The power supplies are massive. Same size as a modern computer.
3. I mostly use perl, mysql, and perlmagick for modeling and web serving. The e450 was too slow even with 4x400 and 2gb ram.
As far as the budget. If I were to pick up an old sparc I would look at the prices for what you will need to make them do what you want them too. I really bet you will be looking at just a 100 or more dollars to purchase a faster and more expandable machine.
On a positive note, I found that the sunpci cards worked very well in my e450.
