[rescue] T5220 update

[Lionel Peterson]

Ibm about to build-up my T5220, and I wanted to share a few notes:

First, I bought this system with 32 Gig RAM and 8 cores (no HD trays, no HDs)
shipped for $125 (plus TX sales taxes). I thought that was a fair price
including shipping. The system self-tested fine, but I needed HD trays.

The cheap Cisco (light blue) style cable from eBay worked great, the proper
driver loaded in Win 10 when I plugged it in, PuTTY worked great for terminal
emulation, and the cable was just under $10 shipped (I got two, since I have
2x headless UltraSPARC systems).

While designed for SAS HDs, I assume SATA drives will work fine. I will test
the system with 2x SATA 1 TB 7200 RPM drives later this week, my drive sleds
arrived Friday (4x brand-new HD sleds for about $40 shipped). I may add two
240 Gig SATA SSDs as boot devices. Any reason, other than lower performance
and reliability compared with SAS drives not to use SATA drives?

As for RAM, ibve not seen anyone talk about maximum RAM that exceeded 64
GIG, but over at Crucial.com they claim the system can handle 128 GIG (16x 8G
Dimms) - anyone can confirm that? (I suspect it can handle the denser/higher
RAM, but no one paid the then-exorbitant prices such dimms  would have cost.)
I was going to take out 8x 2 Gig Dimms and put in 4 Gig Dimms, giving me 48
Gig total - is that a supported config? I see that memory can be added in the
following steps:

Bank 1 - 4x matching Dimms
Bank 2 - 4x matching Dimms
Bank 3 - 8x matching Dimms

I plan on putting 4 Gig Dimms in Bank 1 and 2, leaving bank 3 as 8x matching 2
gig Dimms - should that work?

I asked about rails, and a couple list members offered to look in their junk
closet for suitable boutsideb rails (there are binsideb rails attached
to the server). I was going to look for matching/suitable part numbers, but
havenbt had time (yet), thanks for the offers, Ibve not forgotten you.

Finally, I plan to download the latest Solaris 11 image from Oracle, available
from my personal (free) Oracle Account, any advice, concerns, or gotchas? I
realize updates are not an option without a service contract, but I think that
should provide a reasonable level of security, performance, and features to
play with...