considering installing FreeBSD on a Dell 2800 and need a wee

[Jerry McAllister]

> 
> Greetings, I currently am using Solaris (SPARC) boxes in my small business, 
> but I am considering migrating to FreeBSD when I build my next mail server. 
> I am considering purchasing a Dell 2800 multi-processor with RAID 1 and 
> RAID 5 on the disks. Whom might I contact to find out if this would work? I 
> have had no experience with FreeBSD but I started off using BSDI years ago, 
> so the BSD model is not a complete stranger to me.

I would be very surprised if it wouldn't work.
The Dell 2800 is so new - just officially announced a week or so ago -
that I doubt many people have tried that specific model yet.   But we have
had good luck with 2300, 2550, 1550, 2600, 4600.   We did run across a disk
controller on a 500 that didn't seem to be supported and some of the
onboard NICs have been useless (some were OK), but all the add-in NIC
cards we have tried have worked.

You can look in the lists of supported hardware and try to match the 
components listed with those installed in the 2800.  Go to the FreeBSD
web page  http://www.freebsd.org/  and over on the right under whichever
version of FreeBSD you plan to install (currently it lists 5.2.1 and 4.10)
click on Hardware notes and follow it through to the parts in question.

Otherwise, just get one and try it out, I guess. 

////jerry