Roancea

So, just wanted to contribute back to this thread with info that might help (and offer a chance for someone to correct me!). A few years back I had virtualized unRAID via PLOP and could first-hand attest to the slooooowww boot time and issues with that; so much so that I had gone baremetal. With a new build, I decided I'd revisit virtualizing unRAID under ESX, and ran across plopkexec (actually mentioned elsewhere on this forum for a different purpose). I can say that this drastically cuts down on the boot time (for all perceived purposes, same as bare metal). With passed through M1015, I now have effectively the same config as my prior bare metal (and even moved it over seamlessly) without the hassles I recall of the AIO solutions prior. Granted, this is now a day in, so still waiting for the other shoe to drop...

Just flashed the M1015 I got in using the LSI MegaRAID to SAS2008(P11).zip - 5.87 MB (DOS, via bootable usb key). Have to say - great instructions/walkthrough, especially with it borderline automated. Only suggestion I could possibly make would be to put a note in the readme around step 5 that the PAL error is not able to be circumvented except for swapping systems - would've saved me a couple minutes of checking, but not the end of the world by any means. On a side note, it makes you feel great having 3 current systems not able to finish this flash and having to drop back to an old finicky nvidia based motherboard running a C2D to get the job done =)

Are there any good rackmount cases similar to the norco 4220/4, but less drive bays, ~12? Be interested to see even if they didn't have the backplane - more looking for similar form.