Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-25 Thread Joerg Schilling
David Magda dma...@ee.ryerson.ca wrote:

 On Mar 20, 2011, at 09:26, Joerg Schilling wrote:

  The long term acceptance for ZFS depends on how Oracle will behave past the 
  announced Solaris 11 is released. If they don't Opensource the related ZFS, 
  they will harm the future of ZFS. If they Opensource it again, there is 
  still a 
  problem with syncing the ZFS ve3rsions from the OSS OpenSolaris 
  continuation 
  projects.

 For a while Apple was considering it, and if Ellison and Jobs can come to an 
 agreement, it would certainly become very popular very quickly.

I am sure that there is still a chance to see ZFS in Mac OS X and Linux.

To make it really open, I would like to see vendor tagged feature descriptors 
as mentioned before.


Jörg

-- 
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-24 Thread Michael DeMan
I think on this, the big question is going to be whether Oracle continues to 
release ZFS updates under CDDL after their commercial releases.

Overall, in the past it has obviously and necessarily been the case that 
FreeBSD has been a '2nd class citizen'.

Moving forward, that 2nd class idea becomes very mutable - and ironically it 
becomes more so in regards to dealing with organizations that have longevity.

Moving forward...

If Oracle continues to release critical ZFS feature sets under CDDL to the 
community, then:

A) They are no longer pre-releasing those features to OpenSolaris
B) FreeBSD gets them at the same time.

If Oracle does not continue to release ZFS features sets under CDDL, then then 
game changes.  Pick your choice of operating systems - one that has a history 
of surviving for nearly two decades on its own with community support, or the 
'green leaf off the dead tree' that just decided to jump into the willy-nilly 
world without direct/giant corporate support.

2nd class citizen issue for FreeBSD disappears either way.  

The only remaining question would be the remaining crufts of legal disposition. 
 I could for instance see NetApp or somebody try and sue ixSystems, but I have 
a really, really rough time seeing Oracle/LarryEllison suing the FreeBSD 
foundation overall or something?

Oh yeah - plus BTRFS on the horizon?

Honestly - I am not here to start a flame war - I am asking these questions 
because businesses both big and small need to know what to do.

My hunch is, we all have to wait and see if Oracle releases ZFS updates after 
Solaris 11, and if so, whether that is a subset of functionality or full 
functionality. 

- mike


On Mar 19, 2011, at 11:54 PM, Fajar A. Nugraha wrote:

 On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 4:05 AM, Pawel Jakub Dawidek p...@freebsd.org wrote:
 On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 06:22:01PM -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
 Newer versions of FreeBSD have newer ZFS code.
 
 Yes, we are at v28 at this point (the lastest open-source version).
 
 That said, ZFS on FreeBSD is kind of a 2nd class citizen still. [...]
 
 That's actually not true. There are more FreeBSD committers working on
 ZFS than on UFS.
 
 How is the performance of ZFS under FreeBSD? Is it comparable to that
 in Solaris, or still slower due to some needed compatibility layer?
 
 -- 
 Fajar
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-24 Thread David Magda
On Mar 24, 2011, at 02:03, Michael DeMan wrote:

 The only remaining question would be the remaining crufts of legal 
 disposition.  I could for instance see NetApp or somebody try and sue 
 ixSystems, but I have a really, really rough time seeing Oracle/LarryEllison 
 suing the FreeBSD foundation overall or something?

Last time I checked NetApp actually used FreeBSD under the hood. As do Isilon 
and Juniper AFAIK.

That's not to say they couldn't, but from a PR perspective it's going to stir 
things up.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-24 Thread Joerg Schilling
Michael DeMan sola...@deman.com wrote:

 Moving forward...

 If Oracle continues to release critical ZFS feature sets under CDDL to the 
 community, then:

 A) They are no longer pre-releasing those features to OpenSolaris
 B) FreeBSD gets them at the same time.

 If Oracle does not continue to release ZFS features sets under CDDL, then 
 then game changes.  Pick your choice of operating systems - one that has a 
 history of surviving for nearly two decades on its own with community 
 support, or the 'green leaf off the dead tree' that just decided to jump into 
 the willy-nilly world without direct/giant corporate support.

 2nd class citizen issue for FreeBSD disappears either way.  

If Oracle does not continue to publish up to date ZFS sources under CDDL, then 
it may even be that Orcale becomes a second class citizen in the future as it 
may be that there is more ZFS development in the community than it is inside 
Oracle.

 Oh yeah - plus BTRFS on the horizon?

BTRFS is to be discussed in 6 years, after BTRFS might have become mature.

Jörg

-- 
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-24 Thread Paul B. Henson

On 3/21/2011 5:44 PM, Garrett D'Amore wrote:


We do have support for running your own code using our API. Its just
 that we can't reasonably be expected to support people who want do
things like... oh, zpool import -f  (note the -f).  Or editing
local configuration files that are also managed by the management
software.


You wouldn't have to worry about the latter in my case, as I'd turn off
the management software and manage the configuration files automatically
along with the rest of my infrastructure ;).

The main additional components we would need to run would be apache with
mod_authz_fsacl, and a separate instance of apache with mod_perl that
provides the API our identity management infrastructure hooks into to
manage zfs file systems. We also replace syslog with syslog-ng, run
openntpd instead of xntpd, and run a variety of management tools such as
tenshi, aide, munin... Another project that's coming up is going to
require the creation of a captive service account for a CMS to sftp
files into user and group web directories.

I dunno that your support guys would be happy with the relatively
extensive changes we would make to the default state of your appliance
:). And I wouldn't particularly want to worry about having to get
approval to make changes when things come up that don't fit into the
out-of-the-box experience. So unfortunately NexentaStor most likely
won't fit our requirements; I kind of prefer a general-purpose operating
system over an appliance anyway.


NCP 4 will have the same fixes that OpenSolaris has.  I'd be
interested to know which bugs are most annoying for this person --
we have a variety of them fixed in NS 3.1, but have not yet
resync'ed NCP 3 (something we will do when 3.1 ships).


He mentioned in passingan NFSv4 OpenOwner lock problem that I'm
unfamiliar with, and a TCP/IP related kernel panic. He's on the list, so
I guess he could pipe in with more details if he chooses.

One thing that's really biting me right now is the interaction between
NFS exclusive open, ACL's, and mode bits. Due to a limitation in the
protocol, the initial open has a mode of 0, and then the intended
creation mode is separately set later with a setattr. So the object
inherits the correct ACL on the open, and then the equivalent of a chmod
is performed destroying it :(. Oracle most likely isn't going to fix it,
it's been a known issue since January 2005 (CR6215088, initially with
UFS ACLs, also breaks ZFS ACLs),
and the ticket I opened about it was closed. Unfortunately they didn't
take the opportunity to fix it in NFSv4, although it looks like it was
addressed in NFSv4.1. It seems like it should be possible to work around
it in NFSv4, if we end up going with an open source distribution
hopefully we can fix it ourselves. Or it would be solved as a side 
effect of aclmode=ignore.



On a general basis, its hard to allocate engineers for ad-hoc
projects like this mostly because I already have more work than I
have engineers to perform the work.

Oh, did I mention, we're hiring? :-)


I wish you the best of luck in hiring sufficient engineers to be able to
offer support for NCP or OpenIndiana :)...


--
Paul B. Henson  |  (909) 979-6361  |  http://www.csupomona.edu/~henson/
Operating Systems and Network Analyst  |  hen...@csupomona.edu
California State Polytechnic University  |  Pomona CA 91768
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-23 Thread Pawel Jakub Dawidek
On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 01:54:54PM +0700, Fajar A. Nugraha wrote:
 On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 4:05 AM, Pawel Jakub Dawidek p...@freebsd.org wrote:
  On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 06:22:01PM -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
  Newer versions of FreeBSD have newer ZFS code.
 
  Yes, we are at v28 at this point (the lastest open-source version).
 
  That said, ZFS on FreeBSD is kind of a 2nd class citizen still. [...]
 
  That's actually not true. There are more FreeBSD committers working on
  ZFS than on UFS.
 
 How is the performance of ZFS under FreeBSD? Is it comparable to that
 in Solaris, or still slower due to some needed compatibility layer?

This compatibility layer is just a bunch of ugly defines, etc. to allow
for less code modifications. It introduces no overhead.

I made performance comparison between FreeBSD 9 with ZFSv28 and Solaris
11 Express, but I don't think Solaris license allows me to publish the
results. But believe me, the results were very surprising:)

-- 
Pawel Jakub Dawidek   http://www.wheelsystems.com
FreeBSD committer http://www.FreeBSD.org
Am I Evil? Yes, I Am! http://yomoli.com


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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-23 Thread Nikola M.

On 03/23/11 09:07 AM, Pawel Jakub Dawidek wrote:

On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 01:54:54PM +0700, Fajar A. Nugraha wrote:

On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 4:05 AM, Pawel Jakub Dawidekp...@freebsd.org  wrote:

On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 06:22:01PM -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote:

Newer versions of FreeBSD have newer ZFS code.


Yes, we are at v28 at this point (the lastest open-source version).


That said, ZFS on FreeBSD is kind of a 2nd class citizen still. [...]


That's actually not true. There are more FreeBSD committers working on
ZFS than on UFS.


How is the performance of ZFS under FreeBSD? Is it comparable to that
in Solaris, or still slower due to some needed compatibility layer?


This compatibility layer is just a bunch of ugly defines, etc. to allow
for less code modifications. It introduces no overhead.

I made performance comparison between FreeBSD 9 with ZFSv28 and Solaris
11 Express, but I don't think Solaris license allows me to publish the
results. But believe me, the results were very surprising:)


You can compare OpenIndiana oi_148 (and oi148a with IllumOS) and publish 
comparisons.
I think site: Phoronix.com already did comparisons with ZFS under 
several platforms and other (Linux) file systems without sweat.

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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-23 Thread Edho P Arief
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Nikola M. minik...@gmail.com wrote:
 I think site: Phoronix.com already did comparisons with ZFS under several
 platforms and other (Linux) file systems without sweat.

with single disk configuration no less (er, more) ;)

You may want to check this instead: http://www.zfsbuild.com/
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-23 Thread Deano
OpenIndiana and others (i.e. Benunix) are distributions that actively
support full desktop workstations based on the Illumos base.

It is true, that the storage server application is a popular one and so has
supporters both commercially and others. ZFS is amazing and quite rightly it
stands out, it works even better when used with zones, crossbow, dtrace,
etc. and so its obvious to see what it's a focus and often seems the only
priority. 

However is isn't the only interest, by a long shot.

The SFE package repositories has many packages available to install for when
the binary packaging aren't up to date. OpenIndiana is hard at work trying
to build bigger binary repositories with more apps and newer versions.
A simple pkg install APPLICATION is the aim for the majority of main
applications.

Is it not moving fast enough, or missing the packages you need?
Well that's the beauty of Open Source, we welcome and have systems to help
newcomers add and update the packages and applications they want, so we all
benefit. 

Ultimately I'd (and I'm sure many would) like to have a level of binary
repositories similar to Debian, with stable and faster changing place repos
and support for many different applications, however that requires a lot of
work and manpower.

Bye,
Deano

-Original Message-
From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org
[mailto:zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Fajar A. Nugraha
Sent: 23 March 2011 01:09
To: Jeff Bacon
Cc: zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org
Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 7:33 AM, Jeff Bacon ba...@walleyesoftware.com
wrote:
 I've also started conversations with Pogo about offering an
 OpenIndiana
 based workstation, which might be another option if you prefer more of

 Sometimes I'm left wondering if anyone uses the non-Oracle versions for
 anything but file storage... ?

Seeing that userland programs for *Solaris and derivatives (GUI,
daemons, tools, etc) is usually late compared to bleeding-edge Linux
distros (e.g. Ubuntu), with no particular dedicated team working on
improvement there, I'm guessing the answer will be highly unlikely.

-- 
Fajar
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-23 Thread Erik Trimble

On 3/23/2011 6:14 AM, Deano wrote:

OpenIndiana and others (i.e. Benunix) are distributions that actively
support full desktop workstations based on the Illumos base.

It is true, that the storage server application is a popular one and so has
supporters both commercially and others. ZFS is amazing and quite rightly it
stands out, it works even better when used with zones, crossbow, dtrace,
etc. and so its obvious to see what it's a focus and often seems the only
priority.

However is isn't the only interest, by a long shot.

The SFE package repositories has many packages available to install for when
the binary packaging aren't up to date. OpenIndiana is hard at work trying
to build bigger binary repositories with more apps and newer versions.
A simple pkg install APPLICATION is the aim for the majority of main
applications.

Is it not moving fast enough, or missing the packages you need?
Well that's the beauty of Open Source, we welcome and have systems to help
newcomers add and update the packages and applications they want, so we all
benefit.

Ultimately I'd (and I'm sure many would) like to have a level of binary
repositories similar to Debian, with stable and faster changing place repos
and support for many different applications, however that requires a lot of
work and manpower.

Bye,
Deano


Honestly (and I say this from purely personal preferences and bias, not 
any official statement), I see the long-term future of Solaris (and 
IllumOS-based distros) as the new engine for appliances, supplanting 
Linux and the *BSDs in that space.


For a lot of reasons, Solaris has a long list of very superior 
functionality that make is very appealing for appliance makers.  Right 
now, we see that in two areas:  ZFS for storage, and high scaleability 
for DBs (the various Oracle ExaData stuff).   I'm expecting to see a 
whole raft of things start to show up - JVM container systems (Run Your 
App Server in SUPERMAN MODE! ), online backup devices, firewall 
appliances, spam and mail filter systems, intrusion detection systems, 
maybe even software routers, etc...


It's here that I think Solaris' strengths can beat its competitors, and 
where its weaknesses aren't significant.


Sadly, I think Solaris' future as a general-purpose OS is likely finished.

Of course, that's just my reading of the tea leaves...

--
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop:  usca22-123
Phone:  x17195
Santa Clara, CA

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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-23 Thread Paul Kraus
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 9:27 AM, Erik Trimble erik.trim...@oracle.com wrote:

 For a lot of reasons, Solaris has a long list of very superior functionality
 that make is very appealing for appliance makers.  Right now, we see that in
 two areas:  ZFS for storage, and high scaleability for DBs (the various
 Oracle ExaData stuff).   I'm expecting to see a whole raft of things start
 to show up - JVM container systems (Run Your App Server in SUPERMAN MODE! ),
 online backup devices, firewall appliances, spam and mail filter systems,
 intrusion detection systems, maybe even software routers, etc...

 It's here that I think Solaris' strengths can beat its competitors, and
 where its weaknesses aren't significant.

 Sadly, I think Solaris' future as a general-purpose OS is likely finished.

It has been a long time since I thought that Solaris made a good
Workstation, SunRays not withstanding. The JDS spin of Gnome was an
attempt to get back into the Workstation space, but IMHO was not
really a player. Solaris' strengths have been on the server side and
some of the very serious innovation in Solaris 10 really solidified
that position (ZFS, dtrace, SMF, FMD, etc.). With this as the starting
point, it is easy to see how packaging Solaris into an appliance is
appealing.

While I am mostly a Solaris admin, my desktop runs Linux and has
for over 5 years. The strength of the desktop tools consistently
available on Linux as part of the distribution was what converted me
over. Back in 1996 I had a dual CPU SPARC20 running
OpenLook/OpenWindows as my desktop and it was fantastic, but times
change.

-- 
{1-2-3-4-5-6-7-}
Paul Kraus
- Senior Systems Architect, Garnet River ( http://www.garnetriver.com/ )
- Sound Coordinator, Schenectady Light Opera Company (
http://www.sloctheater.org/ )
- Technical Advisor, RPI Players
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-22 Thread Jeff Bacon
 I've also started conversations with Pogo about offering an
OpenIndiana
 based workstation, which might be another option if you prefer more of
a
 general purpose solution.
 
   - Garrett

Just to highlight a point that seems often lost here - not everyone uses
Solaris/ZFS as a file storage appliance/home NAS and
workstation/workstation. Sometimes, people want to run applications
on the machine too. :)

ZFS became such a focus and driver for Solaris that sometimes it feels
like the tail is wagging the dog. (Of course I'm writing this to the ZFS
list, so...) 

I use ZFS for fileservers, sure. The primary application though is an
in-house database using ZFS to tie together 120TB worth of JBODs and 2TB
Constellations via LSI HBAs to present filesystems to a bunch of
processes on the box doing intensive data analysis. ZFS is great, ZFS is
good, indeed, ZFS is one of the drivers for why this is using Solaris
and not CentOS... but it matters that Solaris be a decent all-round OS,
not a tuned fileserver appliance.

Sometimes I'm left wondering if anyone uses the non-Oracle versions for
anything but file storage... ? 

-bacon
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-22 Thread Fajar A. Nugraha
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 7:33 AM, Jeff Bacon ba...@walleyesoftware.com wrote:
 I've also started conversations with Pogo about offering an
 OpenIndiana
 based workstation, which might be another option if you prefer more of

 Sometimes I'm left wondering if anyone uses the non-Oracle versions for
 anything but file storage... ?

Seeing that userland programs for *Solaris and derivatives (GUI,
daemons, tools, etc) is usually late compared to bleeding-edge Linux
distros (e.g. Ubuntu), with no particular dedicated team working on
improvement there, I'm guessing the answer will be highly unlikely.

-- 
Fajar
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-22 Thread David Magda
On Mar 22, 2011, at 21:09, Fajar A. Nugraha wrote:

 Seeing that userland programs for *Solaris and derivatives (GUI,
 daemons, tools, etc) is usually late compared to bleeding-edge Linux
 distros (e.g. Ubuntu), with no particular dedicated team working on
 improvement there, I'm guessing the answer will be highly unlikely.

Pkgsrc works pretty well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pkgsrc

As does Blastwave and Sunfreeware. I like a stable base to work off, and that's 
why I'm also a fan of the BSDs: a well-done OS, with fairly easy  to add 
third-party software.

Having pre-packaged binaries is useful, but I find that either the churn is too 
fast (Fedora, Ubuntu), or it's stable and therefore no different that having 
Solaris/BSD (RHEL-based stuff). There's also the fact that the pre-packaged 
stuff often pulls in dependencies I have no use for (e.g., Avahi, D-Bus).

Pluses and minuses to both.

I can deal with installing more up-to-date packages if need be. There is no 
substitute for ZFS, zones/jails, DTrace, etc.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-21 Thread Paul B. Henson

On 3/18/2011 3:15 PM, Garrett D'Amore wrote:


a) Nexenta Core Platform is a bare-bones OS.  No GUI, in other words
(no X11.)  It might well suit you.


Indeed :), my servers are headless (well, as headless as you can get on
x86 hardware 8-/, they do have an ipmi remote console that still needs
to be used occasionally sigh) and I generally install a minimal set of
packages. We have the X client libraries installed on some of our linux
servers, as our DBA's like to run the gui oracle installer, but I don't
recall ever needing to run X software on our storage servers. One of my
many spats with Oracle technical support (the database side, not the
operating system side) was trying to get them to justify why the
xscreensaver package was listed as a core dependency of running 10g
under RHEL 5 :(. Never did get an answer to that, they just closed the
ticket out from under me...


c) NCP 4 is still 5-6 months away.  We're still developing it.


By the time I do some initial evaluation, then some prototyping, I don't
anticipate migrating anything production wise until at the earliest
Christmas break, so that timing shouldn't be a problem. Any thoughts on
how soon a beta might be available? As it sounds like there will be
significant changes, it might be better to evaluate with a beta of the
new stuff rather than the production version of the older stuff. Plus I
generally tend to break things in unexpected ways ;), so doing that in
the beta cycle might be beneficial.


d) NCP 4 will make much more use of the illumos userland, and only
use Debian when illumos doesn't have an equivalent.


Given both NCP and OpenIndiana will be based off of illumos, and as of
version 4 NCP will be migrating as much as possible of the userland to
solaris as opposed to gnu, other than the differing packaging formats
what do you feel will distinguish NCP from openindiana? NCP is positioned as
a bare-bones server, whereas openindiana is trying to be more general
purpose including desktop use?


e) NCP comes entirely unsupported.  NexentaStor is a commercial
product with real support behind it, though.


Can you treat NexentaStor like a general purpose operating system, not
use the management gui, and configure everything from a shell prompt, or
is it more appliance like and you're locked out from the OS? In other
words, would it be possible (although not necessarily cost-effective) to
pay for NexentaStor for the support but treat it like NCP?

Has your company considered basic support contracts for NCP? I've heard
from at least one other site that might be interested in something like
that. We don't need much in the way of handholding, the majority of our
support calls end up being actual bugs or limitations in solaris. But if
one of our file servers panics, doesn't import a pool when it boots, and
crashes every time you try to import it by hand, it would be nice to
have an engineer available :).

Thanks...


--
Paul B. Henson  |  (909) 979-6361  |  http://www.csupomona.edu/~henson/
Operating Systems and Network Analyst  |  hen...@csupomona.edu
California State Polytechnic University  |  Pomona CA 91768
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-21 Thread Garrett D'Amore
On Mon, 2011-03-21 at 14:56 -0700, Paul B. Henson wrote:
 On 3/18/2011 3:15 PM, Garrett D'Amore wrote:

 
  c) NCP 4 is still 5-6 months away.  We're still developing it.
 
 By the time I do some initial evaluation, then some prototyping, I don't
 anticipate migrating anything production wise until at the earliest
 Christmas break, so that timing shouldn't be a problem. Any thoughts on
 how soon a beta might be available? As it sounds like there will be
 significant changes, it might be better to evaluate with a beta of the
 new stuff rather than the production version of the older stuff. Plus I
 generally tend to break things in unexpected ways ;), so doing that in
 the beta cycle might be beneficial.

I *hate* talking about unreleased product schedules, but I think you can
expect a beta with a month or two, perhaps less.  We've already got an
alpha that we've handed out in limited quantities.

 
  d) NCP 4 will make much more use of the illumos userland, and only
  use Debian when illumos doesn't have an equivalent.
 
 Given both NCP and OpenIndiana will be based off of illumos, and as of
 version 4 NCP will be migrating as much as possible of the userland to
 solaris as opposed to gnu, other than the differing packaging formats
 what do you feel will distinguish NCP from openindiana? NCP is positioned as
 a bare-bones server, whereas openindiana is trying to be more general
 purpose including desktop use?

NCP is a core-technology thing.  Definitely not a general purpose OS at
all, and will be missing all the desktop stuff.

The idea behind NCP is that other distros build on top of, or people who
just want that bare bones OS use it.  It comes with debian packaging,
and we do have a bunch of the common server packages (Apache, etc.) set
up, but not everything that you might want.

 
  e) NCP comes entirely unsupported.  NexentaStor is a commercial
  product with real support behind it, though.
 
 Can you treat NexentaStor like a general purpose operating system, not
 use the management gui, and configure everything from a shell prompt, or
 is it more appliance like and you're locked out from the OS? In other
 words, would it be possible (although not necessarily cost-effective) to
 pay for NexentaStor for the support but treat it like NCP?

Once you dive under the controlled UI (which you can do), you basically
are breaking your support contract.

Going forward, NCP and NS will be more closely synchronized, so you'll
be able to get the same OS, and probably receive patches to it, that you
get with NS, albeit without official support and without the proprietary
add-on features like HA clustering, the management UI,
auto-tiering/auto-sync, etc.

 
 Has your company considered basic support contracts for NCP? I've heard
 from at least one other site that might be interested in something like
 that. We don't need much in the way of handholding, the majority of our
 support calls end up being actual bugs or limitations in solaris. But if
 one of our file servers panics, doesn't import a pool when it boots, and
 crashes every time you try to import it by hand, it would be nice to
 have an engineer available :).

There have been some discussions, but figuring out how to make that
commercially worthwhile is challenging.  At some level, our engineers
are busy enough that we'd have to see enough commercial demand here to
justify adding engineers, because the number of calls we would take
would probably go significantly with such a change.

- Garrett


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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-21 Thread Paul B. Henson

On 3/18/2011 6:32 PM, David Magda wrote:


Oracle has said that they will distribute updates to approved CDDL
or other open source- licensed code following full releases of our
enterprise Solaris operating system.

http://unixconsole.blogspot.com/2010/08/internal-oracle-memo-leaked-on-solaris.html


Hmm, I dunno that I'd take a quote from a leaked internal memo as gospel 
;). For that matter, even if they flat out publicly announced it I can't 
say I'd trust them to actually follow through...



--
Paul B. Henson  |  (909) 979-6361  |  http://www.csupomona.edu/~henson/
Operating Systems and Network Analyst  |  hen...@csupomona.edu
California State Polytechnic University  |  Pomona CA 91768
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-21 Thread Paul B. Henson

On 3/21/2011 2:59 PM, Garrett D'Amore wrote:


I *hate* talking about unreleased product schedules


:).


but I think you can expect a beta with a month or two, perhaps less.
We've already got an alpha that we've handed out in limited
quantities.


Actually, I read about that alpha; one of my coworkers was at SCALE 9x, 
if I'd known at the time I would have had him pick up a CD ;).



Once you dive under the controlled UI (which you can do), you
basically are breaking your support contract.


Meh :(, that rules it out for me; I need to run our own custom stuff to 
integrate it into our identity management platform.



add-on features like HA clustering, the management UI,
auto-tiering/auto-sync, etc.


HA clustering I would actually be interested in, depending on pricing; 
but unfortunately not in an appliance-only availability.



There have been some discussions, but figuring out how to make that
commercially worthwhile is challenging


Agreed. If not support contracts, what about engineering services 
available on a time/materials basis? That would cover my main concern of 
having expertise available in case of a critical failure. There might 
also be occasions where a specific bug has already been identified, but 
local resources lack sufficient time or knowledge to efficiently fix it. 
One of the people I've spoken to off-line mentioned a handful of known 
opensolaris bugs he'd really like to see resolved in NCP and would be 
willing to pay somebody to make it happen.


Thanks for the info...


--
Paul B. Henson  |  (909) 979-6361  |  http://www.csupomona.edu/~henson/
Operating Systems and Network Analyst  |  hen...@csupomona.edu
California State Polytechnic University  |  Pomona CA 91768
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-20 Thread Fajar A. Nugraha
On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 4:05 AM, Pawel Jakub Dawidek p...@freebsd.org wrote:
 On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 06:22:01PM -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
 Newer versions of FreeBSD have newer ZFS code.

 Yes, we are at v28 at this point (the lastest open-source version).

 That said, ZFS on FreeBSD is kind of a 2nd class citizen still. [...]

 That's actually not true. There are more FreeBSD committers working on
 ZFS than on UFS.

How is the performance of ZFS under FreeBSD? Is it comparable to that
in Solaris, or still slower due to some needed compatibility layer?

-- 
Fajar
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-20 Thread Fred Liu
Probably, we need place a tag before zfs -- Opensource-ZFS or Oracle-ZFS after 
Solaris11 release.
If it is true, these two ZFSes will definitely evolve into different directions.
BTW, Did Oracle unveil the actual release date? We are also at the cross 
road... 

Thanks.

Fred

 -Original Message-
 From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
 boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Fajar A. Nugraha
 Sent: 星期日, 三月 20, 2011 14:55
 To: Pawel Jakub Dawidek
 Cc: openindiana-disc...@openindiana.org; zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org
 Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10
 
 On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 4:05 AM, Pawel Jakub Dawidek p...@freebsd.org
 wrote:
  On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 06:22:01PM -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
  Newer versions of FreeBSD have newer ZFS code.
 
  Yes, we are at v28 at this point (the lastest open-source version).
 
  That said, ZFS on FreeBSD is kind of a 2nd class citizen still. [...]
 
  That's actually not true. There are more FreeBSD committers working
 on
  ZFS than on UFS.
 
 How is the performance of ZFS under FreeBSD? Is it comparable to that
 in Solaris, or still slower due to some needed compatibility layer?
 
 --
 Fajar
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-20 Thread Joerg Schilling
Fred Liu fred_...@issi.com wrote:

 Probably, we need place a tag before zfs -- Opensource-ZFS or Oracle-ZFS 
 after Solaris11 release.
 If it is true, these two ZFSes will definitely evolve into different 
 directions.
 BTW, Did Oracle unveil the actual release date? We are also at the cross 
 road... 

The long term acceptance for ZFS depends on how Oracle will behave past the 
announced Solaris 11 is released. If they don't Opensource the related ZFS, 
they will harm the future of ZFS. If they Opensource it again, there is still a 
problem with syncing the ZFS ve3rsions from the OSS OpenSolaris continuation 
projects.

The revision number introduced by Sun is only useful if there is no more than 
a single entity that introduces new features.

For a reliable future for a distributed ZFS development, we would need 
something like the POSIX method to introduce tar extensions:

a combination of a textual name for the entity that introduced the
fature and a textual name for the feature.

e.g. SCHILY-zfs-encryption

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:jo...@schily.net  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
   j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni)  
   joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: 
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-20 Thread David Magda
On Mar 20, 2011, at 09:26, Joerg Schilling wrote:

 The long term acceptance for ZFS depends on how Oracle will behave past the 
 announced Solaris 11 is released. If they don't Opensource the related ZFS, 
 they will harm the future of ZFS. If they Opensource it again, there is still 
 a 
 problem with syncing the ZFS ve3rsions from the OSS OpenSolaris continuation 
 projects.

For a while Apple was considering it, and if Ellison and Jobs can come to an 
agreement, it would certainly become very popular very quickly.

Apple probably ships more UNIX(tm) devices than any other  vendor (often over 
3M units in a quarter). Using revenue as a metric gives similar results. And 
who says the Unix workstation market is dead? :)
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-20 Thread David Magda
On Mar 20, 2011, at 14:33, Garrett D'Amore wrote:

 I hear from reliable sources that Apple is not doing anything with ZFS,
 so I would not look there for leadership.

Given that one of the prominent (?) file system guys at Apple left to form his 
own ZFS company, I figured that was the case even before you stated the above:

http://tinyurl.com/4jznw48
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/03/how-zfs-is-slowly-making-its-way-to-mac-os-x.ars

The ZFS Working Group is awesome news. I hope to hear of a bright future for 
ZFS on all operating systems.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-19 Thread Nikola M.
On 03/19/11 12:17 AM, Toby Thain wrote:
 On 18/03/11 5:56 PM, Paul B. Henson wrote:
 We've been running Solaris 10 for the past couple of years, primarily to
 leverage zfs to provide storage for about 40,000 faculty, staff, and
 students ... and at this point want to start reevaluating our best
 migration option to move forward from Solaris 10.

 There's really nothing else available that is comparable to zfs (perhaps
 btrfs someday in the indefinite future, but who knows when that day
 might come), so our options would appear to be Solaris 11 Express,
 Nexenta (either NexentaStor or NexentaCore), and OpenIndiana (FreeBSD is
 occasionally mentioned as a possibility, but I don't really see that as
 suitable for our enterprise needs).
Questions are: Do you care of your OS being open and not tight to only
one company, and do you care for software and packaging compatibility
and do you need payed support or not and do you need it right now or in
the future?
Do you want to tie yourself with Oracle and closed Solaris products?
(even if unofficially there were saying that they might open code after
S11 release)
If you used closed product before, that might be your enterprise upgrade
path. Just prepare to cache Oracle out and that is it.

If you want to use free open source with ability to buy suport and all
you want to use is zfs,
then Nexenta is your way with their both free to use releases and
commercially supported ones.
Nexenta support development of Illumos that is future base of
OpenIndiana, too.
So Nexenta is something like what Sun previously was doing, they are
actively developing it and you can have support for less money then from
Oracle, I suppose.

OpenIndiana is and will contiue to be closest you can get to Oracle
Solaris releases. It shares software consolidations (and packaging,
IPS,pkg) with closed brother. OpenIndiana has stable release in mind in
near future, that might suit your needs.
Dev OpenIndiana releases are (slowly) following path of OpenSolaris dev
releases,
so OpenIndiana can be right now Solaris 10 replacement (many people just
continued to use OI dev) and in the future, with transition to Illumos
base ahead in mind.

I think that best thing you can do is to install OpenSolaris snv_134 (or
134b) and from that point you can see where you can go: To OpenIndiana
dev and then follow Illumos development and wait for OpenIndiana stable
, And try even closed Solaris Express 11.
(with No zfs upgrade to Solaris Express version (!) - Be sure Not to do
zfs and zpool upgrade to closed Solaris 11 express version, because you
will be then locked-in in Oracle zfs versions.)
I do not know how Nexenta could be installed in the same zpool in new BE
but I suppose it can, since I know upgrading Nexenta use zfs BE's, too.

That way, with multiple installs and sharing zfs between them, you are
on safe ground of being able to test and choose to what will come in
future and ,beside Oracle, there are at least 2 solutions now and in the
future, that you can consider.

I would personally like if one could buy support from Nexenta and
continue to use OpenIndiana or Nexenta :) But Nexenta is more
server-like and OpenIndiana is shooting to all-around solution.

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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-19 Thread Garrett D'Amore
Newer versions of FreeBSD have newer ZFS code.

That said, ZFS on FreeBSD is kind of a 2nd class citizen still.  FreeBSD
still gives equal (or higher) priority to ufs, and so some of the
changes in Solaris and derivatives (illumos) to make certain things like
NFS, CIFS, and COMSTAR/iSCSI work better with ZFS won't be present in
FreeBSD.

There are vendors who offer NexentaStor on hardware with full commercial
support from a single vendor (granted they get backline support from
Nexenta, but do you think ixSystems engineers personally fix bugs in
FreeBSD?)  Such vendors include PogoLinux and AreaData.

I've also started conversations with Pogo about offering an OpenIndiana
based workstation, which might be another option if you prefer more of a
general purpose solution.

- Garrett

On Sat, 2011-03-19 at 02:16 +0100, Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote:
  I think we all feel the same pain with Oracle's purchase of Sun.
  
  FreeBSD that has commercial support for ZFS maybe?
 
 Fbsd currently has a very old zpool version, not suitable for running with 
 SLOGs, since if you lose it, you may lose the pool, which isn't very 
 amusing...
 
 Vennlige hilsener / Best regards
 
 roy
 --
 Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk
 (+47) 97542685
 r...@karlsbakk.net
 http://blogg.karlsbakk.net/
 --
 I all pedagogikk er det essensielt at pensum presenteres intelligibelt. Det 
 er et elementært imperativ for alle pedagoger å unngå eksessiv anvendelse av 
 idiomer med fremmed opprinnelse. I de fleste tilfeller eksisterer adekvate og 
 relevante synonymer på norsk.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-19 Thread Pasi Kärkkäinen
On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 06:26:37PM -0700, Michael DeMan wrote:
 ZFSv28 is in HEAD now and will be out in 8.3.
 
 ZFS + HAST in 9.x means being able to cluster off different hardware.
 
 In regards to OpenSolaris and Indiana - can somebody clarify the relationship 
 there?  It was clear with OpenSolaris that the latest/greatest ZFS would 
 always be available since it was a guinea-pig product for cost conscious 
 folks and served as an excellent area for Sun to get marketplace feedback and 
 bug fixes done before rolling updates into full Solaris.
 
 To me it seems that Open Indiana is basically a green branch off of a dead 
 tree - if I am wrong, please enlighten me.
 

Illumos project was started as a fork of OpenSolaris when Oracle was still 
publishing OpenSolaris sources.

Then Oracle closed OpenSolaris development, and decided to call upcoming 
(closed) versions Solaris 11 Express,
with no source included.

Illumos project continued the development based on the latest published 
OpenSolaris sources, 
and a bit later OpenIndiana *distribution* was announced to deliver a binary 
distro based on OpenSolaris/Illumos.

So in short Illumos is the development project, which hosts the new sources, 
and OpenIndiana is a binary distro based on it.


-- Pasi

 On Mar 18, 2011, at 6:16 PM, Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote:
 
  I think we all feel the same pain with Oracle's purchase of Sun.
  
  FreeBSD that has commercial support for ZFS maybe?
  
  Fbsd currently has a very old zpool version, not suitable for running with 
  SLOGs, since if you lose it, you may lose the pool, which isn't very 
  amusing...
  
  Vennlige hilsener / Best regards
  
  roy
  --
  Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk
  (+47) 97542685
  r...@karlsbakk.net
  http://blogg.karlsbakk.net/
  --
  I all pedagogikk er det essensielt at pensum presenteres intelligibelt. Det 
  er et elementært imperativ for alle pedagoger å unngå eksessiv anvendelse 
  av idiomer med fremmed opprinnelse. I de fleste tilfeller eksisterer 
  adekvate og relevante synonymer på norsk.
 
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-19 Thread Deano
Nexenta are a great company (I'm no way affiliated with them btw), if for no
other reason being willing to invest in Illumos and by that OpenIndiana and
NCP (for which they charge nothing). If you need a large enterprise
commercially backed storage server system, NextentaStor is the answer.

If you want a CLI OS, NCP or OpenIndiana text only will fulfill that spot
(there is also illumos-extra which is even more stripped down to bare
minimum), if a GUI or desktop is required OpenIndiana has that covered.

Whilst there isn't yet official commercial support for OpenIndiana, that is
something that has been brought up and the feeling is that it is something
that would like to be offered at some point in time, it is just the
logistics and organization of that support has to be setup. If it became a
deal breaker I'd suggest talking to a senior person of OI, as it possible
something could be arranged.

I expect we are no more than 6 months away from Illumos being the defacto
open source foundation for all the major distributions, which will then
start freeing up a lot of developer resources to continue and improve
things, beyond this initial get everything together period.

ZFS open source future is being hammered out, with hopefully a cross
platform working body to promote and move it forward appearing. I know
everyone involved is both eager to make sure it's truly open and portable
(with support for Illumos/OI, FreeBSD, Linux and OS-X in working or
in-progress) and that it has a future regardless of any code drops from
Oracle (they are of course welcome if they come, but clearly at this point
it can't be relied upon).

Personally I think OpenIndiana with Illumos foundations, is a great
enterprise quality open source OS with a great future and a bunch of really
committed guys and gals behind it.

My 2P,
Deano

-Original Message-
From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org
[mailto:zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Garrett D'Amore
Sent: 18 March 2011 22:15
To: Paul B. Henson
Cc: openindiana-disc...@openindiana.org; zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org
Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

Thanks for thinking about us, Paul.

A few quick thoughts:

a) Nexenta Core Platform is a bare-bones OS.  No GUI, in other words (no
X11.)  It might well suit you.

b) NCP 3 will not have an upgrade path to NCP 4.  Its simply too much
change in the underlying packaging.

c) NCP 4 is still 5-6 months away.  We're still developing it.

d) NCP 4 will make much more use of the illumos userland, and only use
Debian when illumos doesn't have an equivalent.

e) NCP comes entirely unsupported.  NexentaStor is a commercial product
with real support behind it, though.

f) *Today*, NexentaStor 3 has newer code in it than NCP.  That will be
changing, as we will be keeping the two much more closely in sync
starting with 3.1.

g) If you want to self support, OpenIndiana or NCP are both good
options.  NCP has debian packaging, and lacks a bunch of the GUI
goodies.  NCP 3 is not as new as OI, but is probably a bit more proven.

Hopefully the additional information is helpful to you.

- Garrett


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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-19 Thread Pawel Jakub Dawidek
On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 06:22:01PM -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
 Newer versions of FreeBSD have newer ZFS code.

Yes, we are at v28 at this point (the lastest open-source version).

 That said, ZFS on FreeBSD is kind of a 2nd class citizen still. [...]

That's actually not true. There are more FreeBSD committers working on
ZFS than on UFS.

 There are vendors who offer NexentaStor on hardware with full commercial
 support from a single vendor (granted they get backline support from
 Nexenta, but do you think ixSystems engineers personally fix bugs in
 FreeBSD?) [...]

iXsystems works very closely with the FreeBSD project. They hire or
contract quite a few FreeBSD committers (FYI I'm not one of them), so
yes, they are definitely in position to fix bugs in FreeBSD, as well as
develop new stuff and they do that.

Just wanted to clarify few points:)

-- 
Pawel Jakub Dawidek   http://www.wheelsystems.com
FreeBSD committer http://www.FreeBSD.org
Am I Evil? Yes, I Am! http://yomoli.com


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[zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-18 Thread Paul B. Henson
We've been running Solaris 10 for the past couple of years, primarily to 
leverage zfs to provide storage for about 40,000 faculty, staff, and 
students as well as about 1000 groups. Access is provided via NFSv4, 
CIFS (by samba), and http/https (including a local module allowing 
filesystem acl's to be respected via web access). This has worked 
reasonably well barring some ongoing issues with scalability 
(approximately a 2 hour reboot window on an x4500 with ~8000 zfs 
filesystems, complete breakage of live upgrade) and acl/chmod 
interaction madness.


We were just about to start working on a cutover to OpenSolaris (for the 
in-kernel CIFS server, and quicker access to new features/developments) 
when Oracle finished assimilating Sun and killed off the OpenSolaris 
distribution. We've been sitting pat for a while to see how things ended 
up shaking out, and at this point want to start reevaluating our best 
migration option to move forward from Solaris 10.


There's really nothing else available that is comparable to zfs (perhaps 
btrfs someday in the indefinite future, but who knows when that day 
might come), so our options would appear to be Solaris 11 Express, 
Nexenta (either NexentaStor or NexentaCore), and OpenIndiana (FreeBSD is 
occasionally mentioned as a possibility, but I don't really see that as 
suitable for our enterprise needs).


Solaris 11 is the official successor to OpenSolaris, has commercial 
support, and the backing of a huge corporation which historically has 
contributed the majority of Solaris forward development. However, that 
corporation is Oracle, and frankly, I don't like doing business with 
Oracle. With no offense intended to the no doubt numerous talented and 
goodhearted people that might work there, Oracle is simply evil. We've 
dealt with Oracle for a long time (in addition to their database itself, 
we're a PeopleSoft shop) and a positive interaction with them is quite 
rare. Since they took over Sun, costs on licensing, support contracts, 
and hardware have increased dramatically, at least in the cases where 
we've actually been able to get a quote. Arguably, we are not their 
target market, and they make that quite clear ;). There's also been 
significant brain drain of prior Sun employees since the takeover, so 
while they might still continue to contribute the most money into 
Solaris development, they might not be the future source of the most 
innovation. Given our needs, and our budget, I really don't consider 
this a viable option.


Nexenta, on the other hand, seems to be the kind of company I'd like to 
deal with. Relatively small, nimble, with a ton of former Sun zfs talent 
working for them, and what appears to be actual consideration for the 
needs of their customers. I think I'd more likely get my needs addressed 
through Nexenta, they've already started work on adding aclmode back and 
I've had some initial discussion with one of their engineers on the 
possibility of adding additional options such as denying or ignoring 
attempted chmod updates on objects with acls. It looks like they only 
offer commercial support for NexentaStor, not NexentaCore. Commercial 
support isn't a strict requirement, a sizable chunk of our 
infrastructure runs on a non-commercial linux distribution and open 
source software, but it can make management happier. NexentaStor seems 
positioned as a storage appliance, which isn't really what we need. I'm 
not particularly interested in a web gui or cli interface that hides the 
underlying complexity of the operating system and zfs, on the contrary, 
I want full access to the guts :). We have our zfs deployment integrated 
into our identity management system, which automatically provisions, 
destroys, and maintains filespace for our user/groups, as well as 
providing an API for end-users and administrators to manage quotas and 
other attributes. We also run apache with some custom modules. I still 
need to investigate further, but I'm not even sure if NexentaStor 
provides access into the underlying OS or encapsulates everything and 
only allows control through its own administrative functionality.


NexentaCore is more of the raw operating system we're probably looking 
for, but with only community-based support. Given that NexentaCore and 
OpenIndiana are now both going to be based off of the illumos core, I'm 
not quite certain what's going to distinguish them. NexentaCore will 
continue to leverage debian packaging as opposed to IPS, and currently 
defaults to a GNU userland rather than native Solaris userland. However, 
I've read that the next version is going to switch to the solaris 
userland, so will no longer be different from OpenIndiana in that respect.


OpenIndiana was initially positioned to be a binary compatible 
open-source equivalent to Solaris 11, such as CentOS is to Red Hat. 
However, given that Oracle has not released any of their internal 
development work on which Solaris 11 express is based, and 

Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-18 Thread Toby Thain
On 18/03/11 5:56 PM, Paul B. Henson wrote:
 We've been running Solaris 10 for the past couple of years, primarily to
 leverage zfs to provide storage for about 40,000 faculty, staff, and
 students ... and at this point want to start reevaluating our best
 migration option to move forward from Solaris 10.
 
 There's really nothing else available that is comparable to zfs (perhaps
 btrfs someday in the indefinite future, but who knows when that day
 might come), so our options would appear to be Solaris 11 Express,
 Nexenta (either NexentaStor or NexentaCore), and OpenIndiana (FreeBSD is
 occasionally mentioned as a possibility, but I don't really see that as
 suitable for our enterprise needs).
 

You're not the only institution asking this question; here's a couple of
blog posts by Chris Siebenmann:
 * http://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/solaris/OurFutureWithSolaris
 * http://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/solaris/OurSolarisAlternatives

regards
--Toby
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-18 Thread Garrett D'Amore
Thanks for thinking about us, Paul.

A few quick thoughts:

a) Nexenta Core Platform is a bare-bones OS.  No GUI, in other words (no
X11.)  It might well suit you.

b) NCP 3 will not have an upgrade path to NCP 4.  Its simply too much
change in the underlying packaging.

c) NCP 4 is still 5-6 months away.  We're still developing it.

d) NCP 4 will make much more use of the illumos userland, and only use
Debian when illumos doesn't have an equivalent.

e) NCP comes entirely unsupported.  NexentaStor is a commercial product
with real support behind it, though.

f) *Today*, NexentaStor 3 has newer code in it than NCP.  That will be
changing, as we will be keeping the two much more closely in sync
starting with 3.1.

g) If you want to self support, OpenIndiana or NCP are both good
options.  NCP has debian packaging, and lacks a bunch of the GUI
goodies.  NCP 3 is not as new as OI, but is probably a bit more proven.

Hopefully the additional information is helpful to you.

- Garrett


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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-18 Thread Michael DeMan
I think we all feel the same pain with Oracle's purchase of Sun.

FreeBSD that has commercial support for ZFS maybe?

Not here quite yet, but it is something being looked at by an F500 that I am 
currently on contract with.

www.freenas.org, www.ixsystems.com.

Not saying this would be the right solution by any means, but for that 
'corporate barrier', sometimes the option to get both the hardware and ZFS from 
the same place, with support, helps out.

- mike


On Mar 18, 2011, at 2:56 PM, Paul B. Henson wrote:

 We've been running Solaris 10 for the past couple of years, primarily to 
 leverage zfs to provide storage for about 40,000 faculty, staff, and students 
 as well as about 1000 groups. Access is provided via NFSv4, CIFS (by samba), 
 and http/https (including a local module allowing filesystem acl's to be 
 respected via web access). This has worked reasonably well barring some 
 ongoing issues with scalability (approximately a 2 hour reboot window on an 
 x4500 with ~8000 zfs filesystems, complete breakage of live upgrade) and 
 acl/chmod interaction madness.
 
 We were just about to start working on a cutover to OpenSolaris (for the 
 in-kernel CIFS server, and quicker access to new features/developments) when 
 Oracle finished assimilating Sun and killed off the OpenSolaris distribution. 
 We've been sitting pat for a while to see how things ended up shaking out, 
 and at this point want to start reevaluating our best migration option to 
 move forward from Solaris 10.
 
 There's really nothing else available that is comparable to zfs (perhaps 
 btrfs someday in the indefinite future, but who knows when that day might 
 come), so our options would appear to be Solaris 11 Express, Nexenta (either 
 NexentaStor or NexentaCore), and OpenIndiana (FreeBSD is occasionally 
 mentioned as a possibility, but I don't really see that as suitable for our 
 enterprise needs).
 
 Solaris 11 is the official successor to OpenSolaris, has commercial support, 
 and the backing of a huge corporation which historically has contributed the 
 majority of Solaris forward development. However, that corporation is Oracle, 
 and frankly, I don't like doing business with Oracle. With no offense 
 intended to the no doubt numerous talented and goodhearted people that might 
 work there, Oracle is simply evil. We've dealt with Oracle for a long time 
 (in addition to their database itself, we're a PeopleSoft shop) and a 
 positive interaction with them is quite rare. Since they took over Sun, costs 
 on licensing, support contracts, and hardware have increased dramatically, at 
 least in the cases where we've actually been able to get a quote. Arguably, 
 we are not their target market, and they make that quite clear ;). There's 
 also been significant brain drain of prior Sun employees since the takeover, 
 so while they might still continue to contribute the most money into Solaris 
 dev
 elopment, they might not be the future source of the most innovation. Given 
our needs, and our budget, I really don't consider this a viable option.
 
 Nexenta, on the other hand, seems to be the kind of company I'd like to deal 
 with. Relatively small, nimble, with a ton of former Sun zfs talent working 
 for them, and what appears to be actual consideration for the needs of their 
 customers. I think I'd more likely get my needs addressed through Nexenta, 
 they've already started work on adding aclmode back and I've had some initial 
 discussion with one of their engineers on the possibility of adding 
 additional options such as denying or ignoring attempted chmod updates on 
 objects with acls. It looks like they only offer commercial support for 
 NexentaStor, not NexentaCore. Commercial support isn't a strict requirement, 
 a sizable chunk of our infrastructure runs on a non-commercial linux 
 distribution and open source software, but it can make management happier. 
 NexentaStor seems positioned as a storage appliance, which isn't really what 
 we need. I'm not particularly interested in a web gui or cli interface that 
 hides the underly
 ing complexity of the operating system and zfs, on the contrary, I want full 
access to the guts :). We have our zfs deployment integrated into our identity 
management system, which automatically provisions, destroys, and maintains 
filespace for our user/groups, as well as providing an API for end-users and 
administrators to manage quotas and other attributes. We also run apache with 
some custom modules. I still need to investigate further, but I'm not even sure 
if NexentaStor provides access into the underlying OS or encapsulates 
everything and only allows control through its own administrative functionality.
 
 NexentaCore is more of the raw operating system we're probably looking for, 
 but with only community-based support. Given that NexentaCore and OpenIndiana 
 are now both going to be based off of the illumos core, I'm not quite certain 
 what's going to distinguish them. 

Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-18 Thread Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk
 I think we all feel the same pain with Oracle's purchase of Sun.
 
 FreeBSD that has commercial support for ZFS maybe?

Fbsd currently has a very old zpool version, not suitable for running with 
SLOGs, since if you lose it, you may lose the pool, which isn't very amusing...

Vennlige hilsener / Best regards

roy
--
Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk
(+47) 97542685
r...@karlsbakk.net
http://blogg.karlsbakk.net/
--
I all pedagogikk er det essensielt at pensum presenteres intelligibelt. Det er 
et elementært imperativ for alle pedagoger å unngå eksessiv anvendelse av 
idiomer med fremmed opprinnelse. I de fleste tilfeller eksisterer adekvate og 
relevante synonymer på norsk.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-18 Thread Michael DeMan
ZFSv28 is in HEAD now and will be out in 8.3.

ZFS + HAST in 9.x means being able to cluster off different hardware.

In regards to OpenSolaris and Indiana - can somebody clarify the relationship 
there?  It was clear with OpenSolaris that the latest/greatest ZFS would always 
be available since it was a guinea-pig product for cost conscious folks and 
served as an excellent area for Sun to get marketplace feedback and bug fixes 
done before rolling updates into full Solaris.

To me it seems that Open Indiana is basically a green branch off of a dead tree 
- if I am wrong, please enlighten me.

On Mar 18, 2011, at 6:16 PM, Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote:

 I think we all feel the same pain with Oracle's purchase of Sun.
 
 FreeBSD that has commercial support for ZFS maybe?
 
 Fbsd currently has a very old zpool version, not suitable for running with 
 SLOGs, since if you lose it, you may lose the pool, which isn't very 
 amusing...
 
 Vennlige hilsener / Best regards
 
 roy
 --
 Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk
 (+47) 97542685
 r...@karlsbakk.net
 http://blogg.karlsbakk.net/
 --
 I all pedagogikk er det essensielt at pensum presenteres intelligibelt. Det 
 er et elementært imperativ for alle pedagoger å unngå eksessiv anvendelse av 
 idiomer med fremmed opprinnelse. I de fleste tilfeller eksisterer adekvate og 
 relevante synonymer på norsk.

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Re: [zfs-discuss] best migration path from Solaris 10

2011-03-18 Thread David Magda
On Mar 18, 2011, at 21:16, Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote:

 I think we all feel the same pain with Oracle's purchase of Sun.
 
 FreeBSD that has commercial support for ZFS maybe?
 
 Fbsd currently has a very old zpool version, not suitable for running with 
 SLOGs, since if you lose it, you may lose the pool, which isn't very 
 amusing...

For commercial FreeBSD support:

http://www.freebsd.org/commercial/commercial.html

ZFSv28 has been commited to HEAD / 9.x:


http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2011-February/023132.html

and there's patches available for 8.x:

http://people.freebsd.org/~mm/patches/zfs/v28/
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-fs/

Heck, ZFS on Mac OS X may be available (again) by this summer:

http://tinyurl.com/68eg6bf

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/03/how-zfs-is-slowly-making-its-way-to-mac-os-x.ars

Oracle has said that they will distribute updates to approved CDDL or other 
open source- licensed code following full releases of our enterprise Solaris 
operating system.


http://unixconsole.blogspot.com/2010/08/internal-oracle-memo-leaked-on-solaris.html

I guess we'll see what happens once Solaris 11 comes out officially.
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