Infrastructure Software

Hi guys. Having previously experimented a little with Solaris 10 on an old Dell server I am now ready to build my own NAS and install the latest 10.08 release on it. Having also previously had compatibility problems with graphics cards and whatnot, I would just like to check if you think Solaris will install on the following set up. I did check the hardware compatibility list, but no info there.

I plan to purchase the Intel D945GCLF2 (motherboard, which comes with an Atom 330 64bit dual-core processor soldered on to it. It comes with the Intel 945GC Express Chipset, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950, a 10/100/1000 Mbps LAN subsystem using the Realtek LAN adapter device, and two SATA ports. More info on this board here: http://www.intel.com/Products/Desktop/Motherboards/D945GCLF2/D945GCLF2-overview.htm

In addition I want to get two 1TB Samsung Spinpoint SATA HDs and 1GB of RAM (something like Crucial or other good RAM, but still not the super expensive kind).

I read about an issue with the Atom processor being recognized as a 32bit processor in OpenSolaris and problems with the Realtek NIC on the older D945GCL, but there are easy workarounds to those problems. The article is here: http://blogs.sun.com/PotstickerGuru/entry/solaris_running_on_intel_atom

Do you believe Solaris install and work ok on this set up? And if not, will OpenSolaris?

Another question, do you think hardware RAID will greatly improve the performance of this set up? If so, can you recommend a cheapish (Intel or so) compatible SATA RAID controller?

Thanks for any help!