Les Mikesell wrote:
On Thu, 2006-06-01 at 06:51, Mukund wrote:
Thanks, but that makes it a problem to justify any extra cost. I
don't think my company cares whether I have to work a little
harder or not, and in fact I'd rather edit a few config
files than deal with the paperwork every year to get
approvals for an extra expense. And since I maintain other
stock Centos boxes it is probably easier to clone them
and be able to move services around than to have something
different with different update repositories.
Actually there are things which can be done using Openfiler which cannot
be done using a CentOS box. This includes per-share network ACLs for
example.. there are source code patches for this type of stuff which
we've written.
I think it would help sell the product if you could add
a detailed list of the specific features you've added.
And this being open source and all, I'd hope that the
patches you are doing are made available to be added to
the upstream product if anyone wants them.
To replicate a full-blown Openfiler configuration successfully on a
CentOS box would a futile experience. There are several things a system
administrator would have to know firstly which even many top-of-the-line
storage-trained sysadmins wouldn't. And even if they did, they'd have to
spend a considerable amount of time doing non-trivial configuration
work, testing issues and maintaining the configuration.
Yes, but this is offset by being able to run the same
configuration on all of your boxes, being able to point
yum at any 3rd party repository to pick up and maintain
any application there, and running the same well-tested code
as a zillion other people. If you look at it as Linux for
people who don't like Linux you might have a point, though.
Companies
usually do like things which are configurable easily.. many system
administrators would agree that they have better things to do with their
time, like try and talk to the company secretary ;)
I've found highly customized code to be a two-edged sword.
It's great if the author did exactly what you need and
the need never changes.
Correct. But then we didn't design and develop Openfiler to meet the
needs of a single person. Rather it meets the needs of a class of user.
Very well, in fact, I might add. What you should ask yourself is whether
you consider yourself to fall within that class. If the answer is 'no'
then continuing this debate would just be a waste of network bandwidth ;).
It's not so nice if you need
additional customization, your needs change
Sure. I'm curious, how exactly do you overcome this issue currently with
other Open Source software that you use?
or the
company supporting it goes away or lags behind new
developments. I'd really rather see this as an
optional package that could drop into a stock Centos
install without breaking anything else, but that's
just me...
With that statement we've come full circle back to where Openfiler was
2-3 yrs ago. At that time folks were clamoring for the exact opposite -
i.e a standalone, small, easy to install distribution.
I guess what needs to be taken out of the picture is this preoccupation
with CentOS. If you stop looking at Openfiler as just a trivial layer on
top of CentOS (which it most certainly is not), then we can get back to
discussing the original question (i.e what it's worth to you as a user)
in the context which it was framed.
If your answer to the above is "absolutely nothing" then we really ought
to save our keystrokes for another day.
KR
Rafiu Fakunle
Openfiler Project
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