Harry, The LiveCD for OpenSolaris has a driver detection tool on it - this will let you see if your hardware is supported without touching the installed XP system.
A big issue with running a VM is that ZFS prefers direct access to storage. On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 11:48 PM, Harry Putnam <rea...@newsguy.com> wrote: > I'm experimenting with a zfs home server. Running Opensol-11 by > way of vmware on WinXP. > > It seems one way to avoid all the hardware problems one might run into > trying to install opensol on available or spare hardware. > > Are there some bad gotchas about running opensol/zfs through vmware and > never going to real hardware? > > One thing comes to mind is the overhead of two OSs on one processor. > An Athlon64 2.2 +3400 running 32bit Windows XP and opensol in VMware. > > But if I lay off the windows OS... like not really working it with > transcibing video or compressing masses of data or the like. Is this > likely to be a problem? > > Also I'm loosing out on going 64 bit since its not likely this machine > supports the AMD V extensions... and I'm short on SATA connections. I > only have two onboard, but plan to install a pci style sata controller > to squeeze in some more discs. > > Its a big old ANTEC case so I don't think getting the discs in there > will be much of a problem. But have wondered if a PCI sata controller > is likely to be a big problem. > > So, are there things I need to know about that will make running a zfs > home server from vmware a bad idea? > > The server will be serving as backup destination for 5 home machines > and most likely would see service only about 2-3 days a week far as > any kind of heavy usage like ghosted disc images and other large > chunks of data + a regular 3 day a week backup running from windows > using `retrospect' to backup user directories and changed files in > C:\. > > A 6th (linux) machine may eventually start using the server but for > now its pretty selfcontained and has lots of disc space. > > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss > _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
