zfs discuss - Apr 2010 - It''s alive, and thank you all for the help.

I finally achieved critical mass on enough parts to put my zfs server together.
It basically ran the first time, any non-function being my own
misunderstandings. I wanted to issue a thank you to those of you who suffered
through my questions and pointed me in the right direction. Many pieces of my
learning were done right here.

I moaned about the difficulty of figuring out what would run opensolaris and zfs
before buying hardware. In the end, I used a recipe largely copied from someone
who had already built a home server. I''d like to return the favor.

This combination of hardware runs with no problems with the Opensolris live CD
install:
 - ASUS M3A78-CM which implies AMD 780V and SB700
   ...the onboard ethernet on 100Mb wiring with the rge driver
   ... the onboard video runs 1024x768
   ... I did not try onboard sound, DVI, etc.; don''t care,
it''s a server.
 - AMD Athlon II 240e 
 - Kingston 800MHz DDR2 unbuffered ECC ram, 2x 2GB 
 - Syba  SD-SA2PEX-2IR PCIe x1 dual port SATA card with 3124 driver
   ... could not get a disk attached to this to boot the system yet
 - 2x 40GB 2.5" SATA drives, mirrored as rpool for boot
 - 6x Seagate 750GB raid-rated SATA for main storage
 - Corsair 400W 80+ rated PS with single 30A +12V rail for spin-up surge
 - Norco RC470 enclosure, 4U rackmount with between 11 and 15 spaces for
3.5" disks, internal fans, air filter, etc.; it''s big and
ungainly, but modestly priced and not difficult to do the internal wiring as a
result of the size.
 - the usual clot of cables and adapters

No messing about with finding new drivers or things not working (other than the
Syba card not booting the system) were found.

As measured by a Kill-a-watt, the thing peaks at 200W from the wall at spinup,
but settles to 105W at idle, 10W of which is the five bulkhead fans in the case.
I suspect that I could pull the plug on maybe 2-3 of them and still not have
overheating because of the low idle power.

I get a reported 4.06TB of available storage from the six 750GB drives in
Raidz2, and another 30GB left over unused in the boot pool.

As yet, I have no performance numbers. I suspect that it will be entirely
sufficient for my needs, as I don''t intend to serve anything with real
time requirements. It''s intended as a simple, large bit-bucket.

Again, thank you to those of you who helped me.

R.G.
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