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Pricing Out a ZFS Server (Solaris 10 x86)

By Tony - Posted on April 4th, 2008
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Simon Breden blogs about his specs for his Solaris 10 x86 server for ZFS. After looking at drive enclosures, I was curious what his system would cost today. All prices are from NewEgg.com as of April 3, 2008.

  • Case: Antec P182: $139.99
  • Power Supply: Enermax ELT500AWT Liberty 500W SLI $109.99
  • Motherboard: Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe $134.99
  • CPU: Athlon X2 Dual-Core BE-2350, 45W TDP $94.99
  • Memory: Kingston 4GB Unbuffered ECC DDR2 800 (KVR800D2E5K2/2g) $49.99 x 2 = $99.98
  • Storage Western Digital 750gb SATA drives, Western Digital WD7500AAKS $139.99 x 3 = $419.97
  • Video Card: Nvidia EN6200LE $28.99
  • DVD-ROM drive: LITE-ON Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model DH-16D2P-04 - OEM $16.99
  • OS: Solaris 10 x86 - $0.00
  • Mouse/Keyboard: Use existing USB peripherals to set up the system. Once running it won't need a mouse or keyboard attached all the time. $0.00
  • Boot drive: As Simon did, using a leftover old IDE drive for the Solaris boot drive is sufficient. $0.00

TOTAL: $1,045.89 (before S&H or taxes)

This is for 1.4TB of effective storage (3x750GB drives in RAIDZ mode). Not bad, especially considering that some of the drive enclosures cost more than this entire system.

If we use some of Simon's cost saving suggestions, you can shave off close to $200.

  • Case+Power Supply kit: Antec NSK6580: $109.99
  • Motherboard: Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe $134.99
  • CPU: Athlon X2 Dual-Core BE-2350, 45W TDP $94.99
  • Memory (2GB instead of 4GB): Kingston 2GB Unbuffered ECC DDR2 800 (KVR800D2E5K2/2g) $49.99
  • Storage Western Digital 750gb SATA drives, Western Digital WD7500AAKS $139.99 x 3 = $419.97
  • Video Card: Nvidia EN6200LE $28.99
  • DVD-ROM drive: LITE-ON Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model DH-16D2P-04 - OEM $16.99

TOTAL: $855.87 (before S&H or taxes) (View the NewEgg wishlist for these parts to see the current pricing)

This pricing now puts it well within my initial sub-$1000 budget that I set for myself at the outset of my ZFS search. It's more than I was hoping to have to spend, but it's pretty reasonable for what you get. Plus, it'll have some expansion room, since the motherboard has 6 SATA ports.