Hi, all.

I run NetBSD on i386 and SPARC at home, and I run it on i386 at work. At
work, I've just been given a budget of $6000 to get a new server. A work-
able UPS has to be included in that.

I'm thinking that it might be good to get an AlphaServer of some sort,
although I don't yet know what I can afford. (I'll be talking to a sales
guy tomorrow.)

Are there any compatibility issues of which I should be aware? I'll run
1.4.2 if I have to, but I'd rather run 1.5, if it's as stable on Alpha
as it is on i386 at the moment.

Specific questions:

1) What would you recommend for a base system?

2) Are there any stability issues on Alpha with anything in -current? Is
softdep working solidly?

3) Looking at the GENERIC kernel shows only one option for hardware RAID.
Can anyone attest to how well it works? Can someone point me to a good
description of RAID levels? I'm inclined to do RAID 1, but if I can get
to where I can understand exactly how, say, RAID 5 reconstructs lost
data with parity from working disks, I'd be more comfortable considering
it.

4) Are there any caveats or gotchas (other than the partition c versus d
thing) to be aware of since I'm coming from a mostly i386 background? (My
knowedle of SPARCS isn't wildly complete, so comparisons there aren't as
useful to me as they might otherwise have been...) Are there any huge
differences with regard to installboot and disklabel and the like?

5) I didn't save that thing that went around recently about what ports can
boot from what media. Does Alpha tend to be able to boot from CD for the
initial install? (I assume from the outset that the seller won't install
NetBSD, and I wouldn't feel particularly good about not having done it
myself regardless.)

I know I can probably get quite a bit of this from list archives, but I've
been really busy lately - if you feel like answering one or two of the
questions, above, I'd be grateful. I'll add answers to the FAQs as a "thank
you." Perhaps I didn't dig hard enough, but I didn't see answers in the FAQs.

Thanks in advance!

-- 
    Mason Loring Bliss  mason@acheron.middleboro.ma.us  I m m a n e n t i z e
awake ? sleep : dream;  http://acheron.ne.mediaone.net  t h e E s c h a t o n