Infrastructure Software

I am totally new to UNIX/LINUX (but reasonably experienced with WIN 7 & WHS 2011) and my goal is to ultimately setup a ZFS server using a SuperMicro X9... micro-ATX Xeon (1155 pins) board. Needless to say I am a long way from that goal as I am just now exploring the very basics of the UNIX OS.

I successuly installed SE 11 through the Live CD using the GUI from start to finish, but I ran into a number of issues. For example wasn't able to access updates, user accounts or package manager through the GNOME GUI as adminstrator password (ROOT ?) did not accept my login password (it's the same password I used during the user/password query during the live intall). The "Get Started with Solaris Express 11 Manual" said that ROOT is not setup during the GUI install but that the password is the same as my user's account password. That was not the case as I was unable to access any of the admin type tasks such as Users Accounts for example. There no complaints, just that the admin application never opened. After reading numerous threads I found out that I needed to go into the command line mode and access ROOT where I was prompted to reset my password. That finally allowed me to access like things like package updates etc, but not everything as I had hoped.

However, I am still unable to access the partiton manager from GNOME example. I tried using

su -
usermod -R root myuser'sname

but that did not seem to change anything.

I realize that this is very basic (as I feel totally crippled compared to WIN) so any help on:
1) whether this the best forum (if not propose others) for me as I will likely have new questions
2) any good links on Solaris to get started tutorials would be appreciated.

THANKS.