On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 03:00:41PM +0200, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote: > On Fri, Jan 08, 2010 at 12:33:39PM +0100, Rainer Duffner wrote: > > Karanbir Singh schrieb: > > > On 01/08/2010 01:58 AM, Christopher Chan wrote: > > > > > >>> the thumpers make for decent backup or vtl type roles, not so much for > > >>> online high density storage. > > >>> > > >> I wonder how much that would change with a bbu NVRAM card for an > > >> external journal for ext4 and the disks on md. Unless one cannot add a > > >> bbu NVRAM card... > > >> > > > > > > Good question, they are after all ( the Sun 45xx's ) just opteron box's > > > with a mostly standard build. Finding a CentOS compatible ( drivers > > > pre-included, and not crap like cciss ) would not be too hard. > > > > > > > > > > > > With ZFS, the whole machine is the RAID-controller (basically). > > NVRAM in ZFS would be used for L2ARC. > > Of course, this ask for a sane system-desgin (which the thumpers do > > have, as mentioned - AFAIK, there are virtually no off-the-shelf > > motherboads that can offer the thumper's distribution of SATA-channels > > over HT-links. > > > > CentOS wouldn't run bad on such a motherboard, either (and RHEL is > > supported). > > ;-) > > > > Last time I checked only RHEL4 was support.. RHEL5 lacks (properly working) > SATA driver for the controller used in the thumper. > > Is RHEL5 supported/working nowadays? > It seems X4500 (not available anymore) had Marvell SATA controllers, that are not supported with RHEL5. X4540 uses LSI SATA controllers, that are supported. -- Pasi