“OpenSolaris is possibly Sun’s most significant attempt to garner relevance in a market that increasingly demands the freedom and flexibility of open-source software. Although the availability of source code under an open license imbues the platform with considerable value, broader adoption is predicated on Sun’s capacity to build a strong community. Project Indiana represents Sun’s latest strategy for building mindshare and expanding the reach of OpenSolaris.”
In my opinion the whole point in installing Solaris was to get a real rock solid UNIX, and before it was harder to do for regular average everyday people without buying their very expensive SPARC hardware. Now that Solaris X86 support is improving dramatically we are able to get a real UNIX on our hardware, and now Sun wants to go and make another Ubuntu/Linux clone that we don’t need.
Edited 2007-07-17 14:34
Oh, crap. Another flamewar is on the way…
You don’t need, but e.g. I need, and many other people do. The thing is that they should do it the way both – current Solaris user and newcomers would feel comfortable, and what I just read about seems to suggest they are trying to do it exactly like that.
What I don’t understand is why SUN tried to struggle in a highly competitive market where all OS are free of charge. How do they expect to make money? Subscriptions? Nah….
How do you think RedHat makes their money?
I think the problem here, binarycrusader, is that there are people who think that desktop equates to home users. There are more people in the world who use desktops besides home users.
For a large corporation, if Sun can offer an end to end solution; if you don’t want to use Sun Ray appliances then work out a deal for Solaris to be loaded on each desktop, I’m sure Sun would come to the party and hammer out a deal.
There are also developers who aren’t operating system technically inclined; they want to get onto the operating system, do their work, and not have to worry about the underlying issues – if Sun can make a good desktop for them, along with the ‘creative crowd’ that they’re trying to attract with JavaFX as a replacement to Flash/Silverlight, again, more customers for Sun to sell too 🙂
I think the problem is this, people assume Sun wants to ‘take over the world’ like Microsoft when all Sun wants to do is make a decent profit. Not every company has Microsoft-like wet dreams which people here make assumptions over.
Edited 2007-07-17 15:14
Yes but Red Hat was first. It becomes harder and harder, especially that more and more technicians are well-versed with Linux, and that you can get the best Linux desktops for free. If you need support, ask your team in your company. It’s like the way people ask for support on Windows, everybody knows how to solve problems on Windows.
No way. Sun was there WAY before Red Hat, except that Sun sold the whole hardware+software+services package.
What Sun is trying to do now is regain their share of the services pie now that the hardware+software package became commoditised.
Today still, someone versed in Solaris have much bigger paychecks than Linux technicians. And that’s because Solaris is still very niche-y. As Sun continues to lower the barrier for entry, the platform’s popularity is poised to rise. The money will change hands, however; but it’s about time the value of a professional is measured not in knowing the differences between command line flags between userland implementations, but knowing how to put the tools together to outperform competing alternatives.
And in this sense Solaris is heading the right direction. It’s userland provides little to no advantage over regular BSD’s or GNU’s, but the in-kernel stuff like ZFS, DTrace, zones and the fully virtualisable netstack, provide enormous value. And while those technologies are being either ported or cloned to other OSs, one can hardly dispute Solaris is always going to be the one with better integration.
I for one am closely watching this project, because, quite frankly, the Solaris userland sucks. It’s old and cranky and much due for an overhaul.
OTOH I can only hope they make it easy to compile packages from source, because only quite recently the apt-* tools started not to massively suck in this regard.
Agreed 100% And it’s why I am always trying the latest
edition of Belenix and Nexenta . If any solaris “distro” can get a reasonable selection of gnu userland tools and opensource software(P2P for example and VLC) I would switch without a second though for linux. At least Java
should be rock solid
I just feel that their kernel is more professional and stable(and linux sound via alsa is a tragedy)
Have you ever had a Sun machine running Solaris go down? When you call support, you get actual Engineer that with step through decompiled assembly on your hardware if the need is stong enough.
And why shouldn’t solaris copy succesful (and popular!) features of other distros? I would rather they did, thus allowing me a more comfortable enviornment to work in. How many new users would willingly cope with CDE? For solaris to stay relevant it must advance alongside the rest of the industry, not allow itself to become antiquated just so as not to ‘copy’ linux.
The CDE is perfectly fine.
CDE is deprecated, CDE isn’t really being developed anymore, CDE isn’t really being developed FOR anymore, and CDE will not be found in some or all future Solaris-derived works. So CDE is not perfectly fine.
There is better CDE. It is called Xfce. But Sun still can’t find.
> There is better CDE. It is called Xfce. But Sun still can’t find.
No, Sun can, you can’t….
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/xfce
I can see what you guys mean, Nevada does seem like a good idea. I personally would like to see Nevada and another branch similar to Solaris releases of the past.
“it was harder to do for regular average everyday people”
What regular average everyday people needs to install a rock solid UNIX?
Wrong. It makes ample sense, because:
– no decent package management
– Userland is outdated and needs to be updated
– Configuration is really bad
– GUI is ok but not even with Linux
…
The package management alone would be worth this Indiana project.
And what is wrong with the package commands that ship with Solaris?
The userland works fine for me, I can compile the software I need using only gcc and Sun’s make (apache, OpenSSL, OpenSSH, BIND, Samba, etc.). If you need the GNU userland to build applications then complain to the people who write the software, not the people who build the OS.
What configuration is “really bad”? Specifics would be useful here.
And the GUI is a matter of personal preference, I like JDS on my Sun Ray.
Sun wants Open Solaris and Solaris to have the broad appeal and adoption that Linux enjoys now. It’s obviously an enormous market and would mean near infinite opportunities for Sun to grow. It’s natural, and even wise, that they would adopt some of the attributes of this market in order to encroach into it.
Sun is just trying to exploit existing OSS to make “enterprise” (as if there was such a thing) customers a switch over to them.
They open the kernel (which is mostly useless on x86 at that time), take all the userland stuff from OSS and tell the enteprizers “look, we got everything linux has, but we offer stable ABI, and an idiot to call if something goes wrong, plus we’re a company, and you can feel safer with us (because of your 20 year behind mentality)”.
That’s about it. I’m not saying Solaris is worse or better than linux (well it’s worse on x86), but all you seem to be guessing as to the validity of their actions. I think it’s clear where they want to go with it.
They are NOT competing with Red Had, at least not directly, because Red Hat is linux, and while they are a company, linux is a community thingy (this will always scare the enterprizers), but Solaris, while Open, is not a community thingy. So it’s like trying to reintroduce UNIX with a Linux userland (which is SO better than what Sun has to offer).
Edited 2007-07-17 17:07
This ability to see into the hearts and minds of others must come in handy around the office.
I just wished the guy who modded me down would say the reason and find it in the rules here.. oh well.
You might disagree, but if you think that Solaris was opened because Sun is feeling like being the good guy think again. All bigger companies care only about profit, there’s always something behind it.
It’s simply easier to take the OSS stuff, put it on your kernel and sell that as a “solution”, than building your own.
I call it exploitation, you can call it collaboration if you are so naive
I didn’t mod you down, and I agree that there is way too much “I Disagree” modding going on here. It usually balances out, though (I modded you’re original comment up just to balance the goofy person).
As for my comment, I wasn’t saying whether or not “Sun” had evil motives or not. My point was that that whole line of reasining is fruitless. Sun, IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat, etc are just companies, not individual people. There is little benefit to attributing human-like emotions to them. I agree that they are all in business for profit. I think that it is better just to deal with their actions – e.g., they open-source Java. That is a good thing. As for the motive behind it – let’s just assume it is to be a successful company, to make a profit. Instead, your comment seemed to allude to some sinister motive. I don’t think that is helpful. Opening Solaris, Java, for whatever reason, is a good thing. Enjoy it!
[EDIT: Grammar]
Edited 2007-07-17 18:46
They are NOT competing with Red Had, at least not directly, because Red Hat is linux, and while they are a company, linux is a community thingy (this will always scare the enterprizers), but Solaris, while Open, is not a community thingy. So it’s like trying to reintroduce UNIX with a Linux userland (which is SO better than what Sun has to offer).
Actually, they are competing with Red Hat, and they specifically say so. In fact, they didn’t use the term Linux for a while, only Red Hat (which pissed a bunch of people off).
Yes they are selling the same type of product to the same type of customer, but they have a distinct advantage here in the FUD department. That’s what I said “not directly”. IMHO Solaris from Sun will be preferred to any Linux in most cases just because it’s not a community project. The fact that 99% of the thing actually IS doesn’t matter to the decision makers, to them it’s good ol’ Unix from a good ol’ company.
They open the kernel, take all the userland stuff from OSS and tell the enteprizers “look, we got everything linux has, but we offer stable ABI, and an idiot to call if something goes wrong, plus we’re a company, and you can feel safer with us”
That’s exactly what they want to do. What I don’t understand is why you write this as if Sun just doesn’t get it. Do you think that the strategy will fail, or do you find it morally reprehensible?
They are NOT competing with Red Had, at least not directly, because Red Hat is linux, and while they are a company, linux is a community thingy
They are going after Red Hat directly. The appropriate car analogy is saying that Ford doesn’t compete with Toyota because one is an American company and the other is Japanese.
Sun’s going to go after desktop mindshare because that’s how Linux capitalized on the upward growth of x86 into the midrange server market. I think Red Hat understands that washing their hands of the desktop market ultimately made them more vulnerable in their core markets. Ubuntu was a wakeup call, and Fedora is taking steps to bolster their community bona fides.
The war for the x86 server market is won or lost on the desktops of the technological elite. That’s what Indiana is about. Sun has to build a community of enthusiasts, hobbyists, students, and fanboys. They need the Ubuntu crowd. Sun loyalists may shudder at the notion of a quasi-technical populist movement around Solaris. But without it, Solaris is only so many years of Tux-worshipping college grads away from being an endangered species.
Very well said and totally on target.
Solaris is always going to be vulnerable to the growing popularity of another *nix.
I was talking to another Solaris system engineer just yesterday and he was talking about his jumpstart and flash servers, used to do automated Solaris installes, being hosted on a Gentoo server.
At the end of the day, if hardcore Solaris engineers are using Linux for they’re support and infrastructure tools, that has got to be a wake up call for Sun.
It would be real interesting to find out why he is using a Gentoo machine for JumpStart and Flash over Solaris. Is it personal preference or is there some real benefit that Gentoo (or other Linux distro) gives that Solaris simply doesn’t have.
Sorry about the delay, major system failure today so had to reinstall (thank you Vista!)
To answer your question, the guy is a serious engineer and wants a modicum of control over his system that he could not easily attain with a Solaris installation, i.e. being able to compile the whole system from source. Although this is perfectly possible with OpenSolaris, it is in no way as strait forward as with any source based Linux distro (including LFS).
I suspect another reason is the availability of more up to date software for Linux, especially a source based distro. The servers themselves are not production so niceties like a well integrated KDE desktop and NXserver packages have got to be a bonus.
The fact that it’s perfectly possible to do this, as Jumpstart and Flash servers use standard networking protocols and setups, is enough to give Sun a good run for it’s money. You no longer have to buy a Sparc system to be able to service a Solaris environment and that has got to be cutting into they’re profit margins.
Frankly, I think the guy is a bit of a nut as I would never be interested in running such a system for the job, but each to they’re own as not a few people would say.
“So it’s like trying to reintroduce UNIX with a Linux userland (which is SO better than what Sun has to offer).”
Uh, Solaris is one of the *nixes legally entitled to be called UNIX, so I guess you are right.
“So it’s like trying to reintroduce UNIX with a Linux userland”
Uh, you’re aware that Linux is a Unix right? Maybe not in the certified way but in practice it is.
“(which is SO better than what Sun has to offer).”
I’m sure you base this opinion on your extensive experience with Solaris.
“Exploit” WTF?
What are you talking about, Sun doesn’t have the corner on “exploiting” the GNU userspace! It has been “exploited” since the beginning of the Linux kernel. It’s all covered by the GPL. So, I guess the Linux kernel is also “exploiting” the GPL based GNU programs by your definition, with products like RHEL, SuSE, Debian, Ubuntu, etc….
Using GNU programs to update “Open”Solaris has nothing to do with “exploiting”, read the GPL and learn! Guess what, they (Sun) are also part of the “community” you speak of, maybe not as prominent of a member as you wish for, but I’ll guarantee they have contributed more than you give credit. But they “do” contribute. (Do you?)
Why do people bitch about the use of GPL software, when it’s used in accordance of it’s license? No FSF “freedoms” are being undermined here and no endangered animals have been compromised! Life is good (and I don’t have to reboot as often)!
I moved to Solaris recently after using Linux for 3 years. The reason is the availability of excellent documentation and tools for HPC development like compilers, IDE, HPC libraries and profiler in one set. The required tools for HPC are available for linux too, but they are not unified. Also with Sun’s documentation I don’t have to look elsewhere 90% of time, which I think is rare for linux. My productivity increased dramatically after moving to Solaris. I think this is one area, where Solaris beats linux.
Other thoughts: For Solaris packages are available from external repositories and installing them is quite easy. I found & installed most of the apps I use on linux. Also the look & feel of gnome desktop is good. MP3 player worked out of box. Accessing DOS & NTFS partitions is easy. Have to find a way to access linux (XFS and ReiserFS) partitions.
^^proof of [Solaris] concept
I bet many others will find a Solaris-something distro enjoyable once a Solaris-something gets its head screwed on straight. Right now Sun and the few other contributers are still in the growing pain phase, I think.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Schwartz shoot Indiana off like a rocket in the fall by announcing that it will be GPLv3 when it ships. They hinted at the possibility of going GPLv3, and what better way to gain developer attention than with a double-whammy like that.
Changing to GPL3 would be completely pointless – it would achieve nothing.
Give the new installer will be ready by the time of this year, replacement of XSun will be complete (and possible 7.3) it will be in a situation where virtually all of the legacy will be yanked out of Solaris – you’ll have ONNV + Xorg + GNOME, the perfect combination of various projects.
The issue won’t be whether the GPL zealots are happy – heck, they’re never happy, they seem to hate anything that isn’t GPL – be it animal, mineral or vegetable. The issue will be whether developers are pulled over (which is what SXDE is currently doing), whether existing customers deploy it beyond the back end, and more importantly, whether third party software and hardware companies see it as a great platform to develop their software on.
Personally, what Sun needs is an injection of charisma and a better marketing team – someone who can evangelise the products and keep people glued to Sun and excited about what has and what will come – call it a RDF if you please.
I think Sun is missing some real opportunities. They have a good kernel with well integrated components, they have Java, they have Netbeans, they have Sun Studio, … but they have no identity.
I think Sun needs their own DE with their own API (or maybe make it clear that software for the “Sun platform” should all be written in Java?). They need their own identity. I think it’s useless for them to embrace Gnome, GTK and Linux userland tools because Linux is there already.
There’s a lack of innovation in OS development (in the nix world). I think there are great opportunities.
The problem with Sun is that when they switched from BSD to System V, they switched their mentality along with the kernel. Since then, Solaris has become further and further over-engineered and unnecasarily complex. It ceased being an easy-to-use engineering oriented Unix and instead became a bullet point on resumes and an income source for consultants doing Oracle installations. Rather than trying to make the system easier to use as new features where added on, things become a lot harder and a lot more complex. Sun started thinking like AT&T and less like computer scientist.
In my opinion, Sun has yet to start thinking properly. For instance, compare FreeBSD’s next generation initialization solution to what Sun came up with for Solaris 10. Sure Solaris came up with something with much more inherent robustness, but they made no attempt to simplify any of it. Now you have to worry about a handful of commands with all sorts of extensions, writing XML files, and a whole lot of head scratching trying to figure where all the files are located and what is happening. Sure you get the whole self-healing mumbo jumbo, but why should all this complexity be put into the initialization scripts and why is XML made part of it?
Ah yes:
svcadm disable/enable [service]
is so much more complex than the, quite frankly, crap one had to go through under the old system.
Quite frankly, you sound like the same doom and gloom merchants who decried the change by apple to their initialisation scripts, but when the likes of Ubuntu do it or Fedora propose it, of course, its innovation!
Barman, please get a cup of irony with a splash of hypocrisy for the gentleman named “Don T. Bothers”
“Sure you get the whole self-healing mumbo jumbo, but why should all this complexity be put into the initialization scripts and why is XML made part of it?”
Note to self…maybe it’s time to look for a new profession!
This link will explain the use of the XML files:
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/submitted/config_smf.html
I personally like using SMF as opposed to using init scripts, if nothing else service information is logged so even if a service does not start, you have some troubleshooting information as opposed to none.
Who does Sun expect to do all the work on this? Will this get more traction than the GNU/HURD?
When Sun and other Linux distros will understand that main problem is not Operating System himself, but the lack of good, well written, bug free applications.
RedHat, Sun, Ubuntu, Novell, …, should concentrated much effort in OpenOffice or Koffice, GUIs stability and resources consumption, better interoperability between OSes and applications.
I haven’t read the article, but I wanted to make this observation: The quoted preview is the most buzzword-loaded paragraph I have ever seen.
Edited 2007-07-18 03:49
Ironically, it is also the most accurate reflection of what Indiana IS about, among all the medias OSNEW has linked to so far.
SUN has always fostered the public opinion that Solaris is lightyears ahead of Linux. Suddenly there is a project that wants to “copy” the good things of Linux. So this is really strange for people – realizing that SUN never was lightyears ahead of Linux.
Actually Torvalds is right: Apart from zfs there is really nothing in Solaris that Linux is really interested in.
Strange to those who don’t understand “lightyears” means 3-5 years in IT industry and things move fast.
Seriously, have you caught Sun saying “lightyears ahead” in recent years?
Linux is just a kernel, and the Solaris kernel is light years ahead.
Userland is what is being “copied” (adopted) and that is GNU/Debian, not Linux specific.
I’ve been using Solaris on my laptop for a few months. It has never crashed, not even once. Sometimes I’ll leave it on for days (w/o suspend or hibernate functionality … heh).
My experience w.r.t stability hasn’t been nearly as good with Windows XP, Mac OS X, or Linux.
Obviously this isn’t a comprehensive measure of the kernel or even stability, but I think it is worth taking in to consideration.
That said, the userland admittedly lacks a lot of features I’m used to in linux. Many of these said features are things even windows doesn’t have, like the ability to easily run various desktop environments, natively compile all sorts of GNU software (not counting things like cygwin and lx brandz), switch between virtual consoles by pressing ctrl-alt-fN, have good power management … the list goes on.
Would I switch back to linux on my laptop? Nope, especially not with lx brandz and the direction Sun is taking with Solaris. Do I still use linux? All the time. Userland aside it has a lot of kernel advantages: it supports more architectures than NetBSD (many more than Solaris currently does), has more choice in scheduling and preemptability (as far as I know), and far more drivers in general (though all the important stuff works on my laptop in Solaris (audio, nvidia 3d, DVD-RW, built in wifi).
What we could do without, as always, is fanboyism. Any good engineer (or reasonable person) knows that you use the right tool for the right job. From this, one can also deduce that we should make both linux and solaris as good as possible since there are going to be people using both no matter what our personal preference may be. The better the operating systems are, the more sharing that goes on between them, the less headaches for everyone in the long run. Same goes for OS X and MS Windows, though admittedly we have little control over those OSen.
“Linux is just a kernel, and the Solaris kernel is light years ahead. ”
Can the comment be based on anything? And when not, why was it modded +5?
Edited 2007-07-19 17:43
As far as I know nobody runs opensolaris. At least not on common, decent, non-ancient hardware. Or if they are then they sure are keeping quiet about it.
I’ve been trying to find a motherboard for ages now, without success. Besides searching forums, mailing lists and google I’ve even asked people:
http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=32610
http://www.gnusolaris.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=6282
I think a lot more people would try OpenSolaris if they knew what modern and cheap hardware it runs on. And if it doesn’t run on any then that should be fixed first.
As someone who has used Solaris x86 since Solaris 7, I have found it is not so much the motherboard as it is the network and video cards. I have built systems using both Intel and AMD CPU’s with Intel and VIA chipsets that worked great. I also use ATI and nVidia video cards along with 3Com and Intel NIC’s.
If you are looking for motherboards with integrated components such as sound, video and network, they are not the best choice for Solaris 10/OpenSolaris, nor would I recommend one.
Have you tried using the Solaris 10 HCL?
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/sol/systems/views/all_motherbo…
And while a number of people will disagree with this, it is not Sun’s responsibility to make drivers available for hardware you might want to use. Take that up with the hardware vendor as I have suggested here before.
> it is not so much the motherboard as it is the
> network and video cards
I’d be happy to use common and cheap pci-e cards for gigabit network and 6+ sata connectors, and I don’t care about the video (I’m happy with VESA, so I guess any graphics card, integrated or not, will do). I’d even prefer that. I haven’t found anything suitable, though. Only a very few hideously expensive server-oriented products. Do you (or anyone) know of any such cards?
> Have you tried using the Solaris 10 HCL?
Of course. It’s filled with old hardware that nobody has even heard of and if you actually manage to find any of the products they are very expensive. I’ve even tried searching for products with the same chips as ones on the HCL, but no luck.
> Do you (or anyone) know of any such cards?
This is about as far as I’ve ever got with OpenSolaris. That is, people telling that there exist some proper h/w out there but when asked for some concrete examples either can’t give any or can only give ones that are very expensive, rare, old and/or substandard (usually at least all of the former three). 🙁
I use a PCI Intel e1000g Gigabit card that is detected “out of the box” and cost me about 30 bucks. I don’t think the PCI-e variant of that card will work.
For SATA controllers you might want to look here:
http://www.areca.us/
This was pulled from a discusssion item in the OpenSolaris forums.
> For SATA controllers you might want to look here:
> http://www.areca.us/
That’d be filed in the “hideously expensive”-folder (read: trashcan).
If a normal mobo with 6 onboard sata connectors costs less than $200 I’m certainly not going to pay $400-$700 for just a pci-e card with 6+ sata connectors! That’s completely unreasonable.
Edit:
Actually an 8-port “ARC-1220” (by Tekram, so I’m not even sure if it’s the same as Areca’s ARC-1220) costs 553 EUR here, which, with a cheap-ish mobo, would make the mobo+sata package almost $1000! (And then you’ll also need RAM, CPU, and HDDs, but those you’d need in any case.)
Edited 2007-07-20 10:37
What a number of people keep forgetting us that Solaris x86 is a server OS, and has been for years. And while many people point to Linux and its “superior” driver support, the same people also forget the “dark days” of Linux (the 1990’s, I know becuase I have also used Linux since 1993) and that support came through the efforts of a lot of people, both individuals and vendors.
As it took years for Linux to get the support it has now, I expect a similar process for Solaris/OpenSolaris.
I pointed out hardware that is known to work or actually has drivers for Solaris. From Beta Testing Solaris x86 I can tell you that SATA support is limited to a handful of devices, and many of them are not cheap. And I really don’t expect that to change overnight.
> And while many people point to Linux and its
> “superior” driver support, the same people also
> forget the “dark days” of Linux
That was probably not meant for me, but I’ll still point out that I have no such memory holes.
> As it took years for Linux to get the support it has
> now, I expect a similar process for Solaris/OpenSolaris.
I don’t think anybody expects (Open)Solaris to work on everything. However, with the rise of OpenSolaris and things like Nexenta there is clearly a demand for running it on much, much lighter systems than $8000+ server boxes. (In fact I know that many people want to run it as a cheap NAS box, which is also what I want it for.) Also, ZFS is perhaps OpenSolaris’ strongest feature, and you’re not going to use ZFS unless you have a HDD (most of which are turning SATA). After combining these facts one would think there would be at least one fully supported common off-the-shelf mobo and at least one fully supported normal, off-the-shelf SATA-controller either integrated on said mobo or, preferably, as a cheap pci-e card.
> I can tell you that SATA support is limited to a
> handful of devices, and many of them are not cheap.
Is any of them cheap?
No, my comment wasn’t meant for you. When it comes to SATA support, Sun supports only a few chipsets. Your best bet would be to go to docs.sun.com and research those chipsets (I can’t rememeber them off the top of my head) and then bounce them off of actual SATA controllers.
Addonics might have something that you could use:
http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/hostcont_cc.asp
> Your best bet would be to go to docs.sun.com and
> research those chipsets […] and then bounce them
> off of actual SATA controllers.
I have done that, but haven’t got anywhere. Also, I’ve read of sata controllers not working properly even though some other controller with the exact same control chip works. Therefore I’d really want either the h/w to be available at one of my local shops where I can negotiate a full-refund-if-it-doesn’t-work deal, or to wait for someone to confirm that the h/w in question really does work before I place an order from abroad or even from another city.
> Addonics might have something that you could use
Thanks. Seems to be a bit limited on the pci-e shelf, with only 2*sata cards available. They also fail my has-to-be-common requirement as they are very hard to find. However, 140 EUR ($190) for 3 such cards from another country (the only euro-shop I found the AD2SA3GPX1 in) doesn’t sound too bad. In fact, it’d be less than twice as expensive as similarly specced h/w for linux, which seems quite good after looking at all that other (Open)Solaris-compatible h/w priced at 300%-600% of the price of similar hardware for linux.
However, I still want to find someone that can verify that this particular model works well in OpenSolaris before I would consider ordering it from abroad.