Hi all,

I'd like to learn more about Solaris 10, to that end I have been
thinking of buying a used sun server from ebay. I know nothing about
the sun hardware, however, and am a bit overwhelmed.

If I was just going to installed and play around and forget it, I dont
think I'd have as much problem... but I was thinking of replacing a
server at work with a solaris box. It does a little firewall/nat/vpn,
a little database (postgresql), and a little web serving (lighttpd/
php). Oh, and some samba. (and I'd like to play around with ldap
someday). Anyway, I dont need a lot of drive space, I currently have
200 gig, and I think that's plenty. I dont need tape or backup stuff,
I tar up the really important stuff and copy it to another box that
does get backed up to tape.

My first question: I'd like the web response time to be close (a
little slower would not be too much of a problem). I found a Sun
420R, with 4x 450MHz, 4GB RAM, 2x18GB. It would be about $260. That
sounds like a great play box, but I'm worried a web response from a
450mhz processor would be slow. Is a 450mhz ultrasparc II compareable
to a Pentium III 450?

Also, it only has 36 gig space if I raid 0 them. And it only has
space for two drives? So if I want more I have to get external
drive's (via scsi or something?) Thats starting to sound expensive.

Second question: what's a good, cheap, way to add hd space. I kinda
like the two raid 0 drives for the os, and maybe database, but can I
put IDE/Sata drives someplace? If I get external drive bay, what sort
of card do I need and how expensive are they? What sort of
performance would I see (can I run my database from there?)

As an alternative, I found this:

Newisys Sun Fire V40z Opteron 2x1.4GHz/4GB/146GB Server

Its twice as expensive, but it seems to have much more cpu power under
the hood. However, I'm left with the same HD questions.

Well, thanks for your time,

-Andy