Newbie to FreeBSD on SPARC - questions about Sun hardware

[Kaya Saman]

Hi,

I'm quite new to FreeBSD as the only things that I've done are a lot of 
research and created a radio from it on an x86 box!

I run a few SPARC based systems currently which run a combination of 
OpenSolaris, SXCE, Solaris9 and 10 and am planning to upgrade to more 
Sun hardware pretty soon within the next few weeks.

I plan to grab a Fire V480 and use it as a mainframe server so I have to 
ask about the compatibility of Sun hardware and FreeBSD SPARC port??

The reason why I need to know is that I had Sun Raid Manager 6.22.1 
installed on Solaris 10 then upgraded to SXCE on a Sun Enterprise 420r 
server which was hooked up to an A1000 and D1000 disk boxes. 
Subsequently RM6 didn't work anymore when installed on SXCE as was EOL 
so I have a concern that if I get the V480 and hook something like a Sun 
S1 or the A/D1000's up to it will the OS detect the hardware and enable 
me to create LUN's or at least format and partition the drives?

Also, since I currently run Linux on many of my platforms I am wondering 
how the SPARC port differs if at all from the x86 software wise?

With Linux for example if one installs say the Fedora or Debian distro 
on any non-x86 hardware things are removed; my main needs are to run 
Cacti, Munin, and perhaps even Icecast2, Darkice, Xmms2 and Dupal5.... 
ok Dupal is a php app so should work but the rest of course are of concern!

Just quickly to finalize my questions: how does the performance of 
FreeBSD on SPARC compare with running Solaris on the same 
platform/architecture??

Basically apart from applications residing in the ports collection what 
other benefits will I get? Like Solaris has Zones while BSD has Jails - 
that kind of thing I'm after.....

Many thanks,

Kaya