OpenSolaris KVM switch compatibility

[joffe]

Does OpenSolaris play nice with KVM switches? I notice ATEN's compatibility charts only mention Solaris 8/9 (which is fairly ancient and possibly irrelevant?). Anyone got any experience?

[jadrevenge]

Does OpenSolaris play nice with KVM switches? I notice ATEN's compatibility charts only mention Solaris 8/9 (which is fairly ancient and possibly irrelevant?). Anyone got any experience?

We've had multiple KVM switches here ... PS/2 and USB and so far they've just worked out of the box ...

If something is Solaris 8 compatible, it should work in the same way with Solaris 10.

[joffe]

Ooh, thanks! Now I can finally ditch Windows for everything but gaming. (gotta get more bits and build a second machine though..) Could obviously just use Linux, but I want ZFS.

[jadrevenge]

Ooh, thanks! Now I can finally ditch Windows for everything but gaming. (gotta get more bits and build a second machine though..) Could obviously just use Linux, but I want ZFS.

I only use Windows for Lego Designer ... My son loves it

ZFS on removable drives is Great though, zpool import and it just mounts all over the file system as you want it

[joffe]

I'm just wondering how much pain I am going to have to go through to get 4TB's worth of media from Vista to ZFS.. Let me guess, Solaris doesn't have NTFS read support?

a quick google shows this

http://opensolaris.org/os/community/...t/ntfs_reader/

Written by someone who apparently speaks English as a second language. I wonder if this tool is in a functional state?

Also, would a 3GHz AMD dual-core and 4GB of RAM have enough oomph to run ZFS on said 4TBs (+++ as I add more drives obviously) with compression? I have a Phenom 9850 lying around which is unstable on this motherboard, it might work after a BIOS flash but I'd rather not muck about with that if I don't need to.

[jadrevenge]

I'm just wondering how much pain I am going to have to go through to get 4TB's worth of media from Vista to ZFS.. Let me guess, Solaris doesn't have NTFS read support?

a quick google shows this

http://opensolaris.org/os/community/...t/ntfs_reader/

Written by someone who apparently speaks English as a second language. I wonder if this tool is in a functional state?

Also, would a 3GHz AMD dual-core and 4GB of RAM have enough oomph to run ZFS on said 4TBs (+++ as I add more drives obviously) with compression? I have a Phenom 9850 lying around which is unstable on this motherboard, it might work after a BIOS flash but I'd rather not muck about with that if I don't need to.

Ok firstly ... 3GHz AMD is easily enough to run ZFS ... I'm running it on my old fujitsu laptop (1.8Ghz single core, old generation, 1.5Gb mem) and it hasn't had a hold up yet

now on to the NTFS bit:

http://blogs.sun.com/ajaykumar/entry...n_from_solaris

however this is only read only ... and it's not good fault recovery ... if the hard disk has bad sectors you have to hold your breath

you might be better off if you're using 2 machines to set up a samba server on the Solaris box and just drag and drop the files from the windows box to it. I can help you with this if you want.

[jadrevenge]

I'm just wondering how much pain I am going to have to go through to get 4TB's worth of media from Vista to ZFS.. Let me guess, Solaris doesn't have NTFS read support?

...

Just out of interest what configuration gives you the 4TB of storage?

how many drives/what capacities are you using?

...

We've got ZFS arrays of mirrored ZFS disks with spares in different parts of the building ... so that it is (num disks * 2 ) + 1 ... made of USB disks.

to get us to 2 TB at the moment we have 5 USB's (we don't need speed, just cheap storage) ... and we ZFS send and receive to other similar arrays in other locations.

[joffe]

I have two 1TB drives, one internal 500GB drive and one external (USB) 500GB drive. It's actually 3 because one of the TB drives is dead, I forgot, sorry. It makes disconcerting ticking sounds and really doesn't work, in a mechanical sense. No partitions or RAIDing or what have you, just plain disks arranged in their regular capacities like JBOD.

Hm, this samba mamba thing sounds better, I'd rather not sully my FOSS machine by mounting something as derelict as NTFS, I'd rather transfer the files if that's possible. I have three complete machines at my disposal if I include my laptop.

I guess I'll have to buy more drives because I don't have anything to transfer to.. Oh well, can never have too much storage. I've never given mirroring any thought before, seemed like a waste of space given that the content is annoying but trivial to lose.

I'm getting home in about a week, at which point I'll order bits and bobs and start tinkering.

edit - I need a JBOD controlelr (or two), PCI-E, anyone which have actual solaris support?

edit2 - had a look, seems like this is a sure bet:

http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data...ails/3009.html
http://nextron.no/main.php3?PI=info&PNO=17353

Unfortunately it is PCI-X, I do not have PCI-X and I don't intend to buy a new motherboard and CPU to do this when I have perfectly fine bits lying around. Won't the 150MB/s PCI interface be quickly bottlenecked by a few drives?

edit3 (this is getting ridiculous): http://jmlittle.blogspot.com/2008/06...s-for-zfs.html WINNER!

http://nextron.no/main.php3?PI=info&PNO=15354

The price is mindboggling, though. (add a comma to get ca. £/€ price, i.e. in this case €300+)

All i want is a pcb with a chip and a few ports on it. The Supermicro Thumper controller is perfect, but it's for PCI-X which is something no consumer motherboard has ever had or will have. This is pissing me off.

[jadrevenge]

No guarantees ... but addonics is generally well supported on Solaris 10 as a raid controller supplier.

http://www.addonics.com/products/hos...SA3GPX8-4e.asp

I know that their PCI-X stuff is supported.

however, that said, any controller that can take your drives will do ... ZFS can do the JBOD for you, you just add more drives to the pool ...

Jon