This is a long thread, with lots of interesting and valid observations
about the organisation of the industry,  the segmentation of the
market, getting what you pay for vs paying for what you want, etc.

I don't really find within, however, an answer to the original
question, at least the way I read it.  Perhaps that's the issue - that
the question was asked without enough specifics and context, and so
everyone has their own interpretation and their own answer to their
own question.

Remembering that a lot of this was branded and marketed as "open
storage", the desire to mix and match components is not only natural,
a clear expectation has been set that it should be possible and easy
and open.

That's not to say that you can expect to have your cake and eat it
too.  Certain combinations and permutations are more qualified,
tested, supported and therefore expensive than others; these
characteristics are part of what you should be able to "mix and
match", understanding the full implications of each tradeoff choice.

Snorcle wants to sell hardware.  Sure, they want even more to sell a
complete hardware and annual maintenance package with annuity revenue
over multiple years with high markups.  Some people are simply not
customers for all of that, but might still be customers for the
hardware. Especially these days, it seems they still would want to
sell the hardware even when they can't sell the rest of the package.

I read the following context between the lines of the original
question:
 - I have or can source disk drives I'm comfortable using.  
 - I understand that I'm not paying for, and can't expect, commercial
   support for whatever final combination I wind up with.
 - I am comfortable relying on standards and specifications for
   interoperability, enough that it's unlikely I'll have to get into
   deep debugging for problems. At least, I'm unwilling or unable to
   pay high premiums ahead of time in the hope of avoiding potential
   high costs for later problems.
 - The J4500 seems like nice hardware, and I know that at least it
   isn't likely to change unexpectedly to some different chipset not
   recognised by opensolaris, just before purchase.  This would give
   me some comfort. 
 - I like Sun, and am thankful for ZFS, and since I have to buy
   hardware anyway I'll look at what Sun offers. Perhaps I would even
   prefer to buy the Sun offering, all else being approximately
   equal.  This would also give me some comfort.

In that context, I haven't seen an answer, just a conclusion: 

 - All else is not equal, so I give my money to some other hardware
   manufacturer, and get frustrated that Sun "won't let me" buy the
   parts I could use effectively and comfortably.  

--
Dan.

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