Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:42:08 +0100, Bruno Sousa bso...@epinfante.com wrote: I often find alot of customers that say that it's far more easy to convince the Board of Directors to buy software rather than hardware or a appliance. My observation is a trend towards (fully supported) appliances / black boxes. -- ( Kees Nuyt ) c[_] ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 01:40:12PM +0800, C. Bergström wrote: So use Nexenta? Got data you care about? Verify extensively before you jump to that ship.. :) So you're saying Nexenta have been known to drop bits on the floor, unprovoked? Inquiring minds... -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a http://leitl.org __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
Eugen Leitl wrote: On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 01:40:12PM +0800, C. Bergström wrote: So use Nexenta? Got data you care about? Verify extensively before you jump to that ship.. :) So you're saying Nexenta have been known to drop bits on the floor, unprovoked? Inquiring minds... I would say this same thing if it was my company or my product.. regardless if it's Sun, Nexenta or any company.. verify the product so you can know the risks.. It's an open source project.. talk with the developers and those in the community who are using it for similar usage as you would.. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
On Wed, Oct 28 at 13:40, C. Bergström wrote: Tim Cook wrote: PS: Not having enough engineers to support a growing and paying customer base is a *good* problem to have. The opposite is much, much worse. So use Nexenta? Got data you care about? Verify extensively before you jump to that ship.. :) I am not aware of any data issues, but simply when I investigated nexenta they lagged far enough behind OpenSolaris that I was concerned they didn't have enough critical mass to keep up. High quality distros are a ton of work. That, and the supported NexentaStor pricing exceeded our $2k ceiling. --eric -- Eric D. Mudama edmud...@mail.bounceswoosh.org ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
2009/10/28 Eric D. Mudama edmud...@bounceswoosh.org On Wed, Oct 28 at 13:40, C. Bergström wrote: Tim Cook wrote: PS: Not having enough engineers to support a growing and paying customer base is a *good* problem to have. The opposite is much, much worse. So use Nexenta? Got data you care about? Verify extensively before you jump to that ship.. :) I am not aware of any data issues, but simply when I investigated nexenta they lagged far enough behind OpenSolaris that I was concerned they didn't have enough critical mass to keep up. High quality distros are a ton of work. That, and the supported NexentaStor pricing exceeded our $2k ceiling. --eric If Nexenta was too expensive, there's nothing Sun will ever offer that will fit your price profile. Home electronics is not their business model and never will be. --Tim ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
On Tue, 27 Oct 2009, Eric D. Mudama wrote: Yes, this may not make business sense for Sun-as-structured, but someone will figure out how to scratch that itch because it's real for a LOT of small businesses. They want that low cost entry into a business-grade NAS without having to build it themselves, something that's a step up from a whitebox 2-disk mirror from some no-name vendor who won't exist in 6 months. It is a free country so there is nothing which prevents someone from developing a really nice NAS admin interface for OpenSolaris and selling it as a commercial product at a reasonable price-point. Everything needed is already in OpenSolaris. It is not necessary to depend on Sun for everything. Bob -- Bob Friesenhahn bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ GraphicsMagick Maintainer,http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/ ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
On 10/28/09 10:18 AM, Tim Cook wrote: If Nexenta was too expensive, there's nothing Sun will ever offer that will fit your price profile. Home electronics is not their business model and never will be. True, but this was discussed that on a different thread some time ago. Sun's prices on X86s are actually quite competitive if you can even find a comparable machine (i.e, with ECC on buses and memory). Given the Google report on memory failures that Richard Elling dug up a while ago, surely no one in their right mind would want to run anything the least bit important on a machine without such ECC, and I doubt you could configure a decent file server /new/ for less than $2K. If you can, I'm sure we'd all like to hear about it! However, you are certainly correct that Sun's business model isn't aimed at retail, although one wonders about the size of the market for robust SOHO/Home file/media servers that no one seems to be addressing right now (well, Apple, maybe, although they are not explicit about it and they don't offer ZFS...). Cheers -- Frank ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
On Wed, October 28, 2009 11:24, Frank Middleton wrote: However, you are certainly correct that Sun's business model isn't aimed at retail, although one wonders about the size of the market for robust SOHO/Home file/media servers that no one seems to be addressing right now (well, Apple, maybe, although they are not explicit about it and they don't offer ZFS...). Depending on the level of rubustness you want, there's always things like ReadyNAS and similar products. The problem is that many of these units use 'embedded' processors, and (Open)Solaris does not readily run on many of them (e.g., PowerPC- and ARM-based SoCs). Though AFAIK, ReadyNAS actually runs (ran?) on SPARC (Leon), but used Linux nonetheless. Perhaps as Intel and AMD build processors more suited to embedded / light-weight systems, Solaris and ZFS may be used in more situations. There's also FreeBSD, which also has ZFS and has been scaling up its support for embedded platforms (MIPS, ARM, PowerPC) recently. Not sure of the porting progress of OpenSolaris off-hand. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
C. Bergström wrote: Eugen Leitl wrote: On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 01:40:12PM +0800, C. Bergström wrote: So use Nexenta? Got data you care about? Verify extensively before you jump to that ship.. :) So you're saying Nexenta have been known to drop bits on the floor, unprovoked? Inquiring minds... I would say this same thing if it was my company or my product.. regardless if it's Sun, Nexenta or any company.. verify the product so you can know the risks.. It's an open source project.. talk with the developers and those in the community who are using it for similar usage as you would.. I 100% agreed. That is the reason why FishWorks with collaboration of their HW team and NexentaStor with collaboration with their HW Partners exists - its all about testing, verification and then testing again. Especially if we are talking about storage software. I think the idea of storage appliance software is just great! It nails down OpenSolaris to the very specific storage purposes. This simplifies testing also because storage appliance don't need to care about things like sound drivers or GUI, etc... I think the Open Storage message is extremely powerful. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 12:27:50PM -0400, David Magda wrote: The problem is that many of these units use 'embedded' processors, and (Open)Solaris does not readily run on many of them (e.g., PowerPC- and ARM-based SoCs). Though AFAIK, ReadyNAS actually runs (ran?) on SPARC (Leon), but used Linux nonetheless. Embedded means many things these days. Is AMD's Geode an embedded? Is Intel's Atom? Perhaps as Intel and AMD build processors more suited to embedded / light-weight systems, Solaris and ZFS may be used in more situations. There's also FreeBSD, which also has ZFS and has been scaling up its FreeNAS 0.7 final with zfs will be out Any Day Now. It may lag behind OpenSolaris, but it is usable. support for embedded platforms (MIPS, ARM, PowerPC) recently. Not sure of the porting progress of OpenSolaris off-hand. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a http://leitl.org __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
David Magda wrote: On Wed, October 28, 2009 11:24, Frank Middleton wrote: However, you are certainly correct that Sun's business model isn't aimed at retail, although one wonders about the size of the market for robust SOHO/Home file/media servers that no one seems to be addressing right now (well, Apple, maybe, although they are not explicit about it and they don't offer ZFS...). Depending on the level of rubustness you want, there's always things like ReadyNAS and similar products. The problem is that many of these units use 'embedded' processors, and (Open)Solaris does not readily run on many of them (e.g., PowerPC- and ARM-based SoCs). Though AFAIK, ReadyNAS actually runs (ran?) on SPARC (Leon), but used Linux nonetheless. OpenSolaris is on its way to running on ARM. http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Project+osarm/ -- Darren J Moffat ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
On Wed, 28 Oct 2009, David Magda wrote: Perhaps as Intel and AMD build processors more suited to embedded / light-weight systems, Solaris and ZFS may be used in more situations. There's also FreeBSD, which also has ZFS and has been scaling up its support for embedded platforms (MIPS, ARM, PowerPC) recently. Not sure of the porting progress of OpenSolaris off-hand. Recent ARM devices such as the dual-core Cortex A9 and similar TI OMAP CPUs are attractive for NAS systems. They are low cost, offer considerable performance, and consume very little space and power. NetBSD and FreeBSD will run on such CPUs so their respective ports of ZFS would be available. It would be useful if OpenSolaris was ported to ARM. Bob -- Bob Friesenhahn bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ GraphicsMagick Maintainer,http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/ ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
Eric D. Mudama wrote: On Wed, Oct 28 at 13:40, C. Bergström wrote: Tim Cook wrote: PS: Not having enough engineers to support a growing and paying customer base is a *good* problem to have. The opposite is much, much worse. So use Nexenta? Got data you care about? Verify extensively before you jump to that ship.. :) I am not aware of any data issues, but simply when I investigated nexenta they lagged far enough behind OpenSolaris that I was concerned they didn't have enough critical mass to keep up. High quality distros are a ton of work. That, and the supported NexentaStor pricing exceeded our $2k ceiling. As far as I know Developer Edition is free of charge for up to 4TB: http://www.nexentastor.org ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
Hi all, I fully understand that within a cost effective point of view, developing the fishworks for a reduced set of hardware makes , alot, of sense. However, i think that Sun/Oracle would increase their user base if they make availabe a Fishwork framework certified only for a reduced set of hardware, ie : * it needs Western Digital HDD firmware version x.y.z * it needs a SAS/SATA controller from a specific brand, model and firmare ( LSI SAS1068E ) * if SSD's are used they need to be from vendor X with firmware Y * the system motherboard chipset needs to be from vendor X or Y and not from Z Within this possible landscape i'm pretty sure that alot more customers would pay for the Fishworks stack and support, given the fact that not all customers need aKa can afford, the Unified Storage platform from Sun. Anyway..Fishworks it's an awesome product! Congratulations for the extreme good job. Regards, Bruno Adam Leventhal wrote: With that said I'm concerned that there appears to be a fork between the opensource version of ZFS and ZFS that is part of the Sun/Oracle FishWorks 7nnn series appliances. I understand (implicitly) that Sun (/Oracle) as a commercial concern, is free to choose their own priorities in terms of how they use their own IP (Intellectual Property) - in this case, the source for the ZFS filesystem. Hey Al, I'm unaware of specific plans for management either at Sun or at Oracle, but from an engineering perspective suffice it to say that it is simpler and therefore more cost effective to develop for a single, unified code base, to amortize the cost of testing those modifications, and to leverage the enthusiastic ZFS community to assist with the development and testing of ZFS. Again, this isn't official policy, just the simple facts on the ground from engineering. I'm not sure what would lead you to believe that there is fork between the open source / OpenSolaris ZFS and what we have in Fishworks. Indeed, we've made efforts to make sure there is a single ZFS for the reason stated above. Any differences that exist are quickly migrated to ON as you can see from the consistent work of Eric Schrock. Adam -- Adam Leventhal, Fishworkshttp://blogs.sun.com/ahl ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 2:35 AM, Bruno Sousa bso...@epinfante.com wrote: Hi all, I fully understand that within a cost effective point of view, developing the fishworks for a reduced set of hardware makes , alot, of sense. However, i think that Sun/Oracle would increase their user base if they make availabe a Fishwork framework certified only for a reduced set of hardware, ie : - it needs Western Digital HDD firmware version x.y.z - it needs a SAS/SATA controller from a specific brand, model and firmare ( LSI SAS1068E ) - if SSD's are used they need to be from vendor X with firmware Y - the system motherboard chipset needs to be from vendor X or Y and not from Z Within this possible landscape i'm pretty sure that alot more customers would pay for the Fishworks stack and support, given the fact that not all customers need aKa can afford, the Unified Storage platform from Sun. Anyway..Fishworks it's an awesome product! Congratulations for the extreme good job. Regards, Bruno You're making a very, very bad assumption that the price of Fishworks would be cheap for just the software. Sun hardware does not cost that much more than their competitors when it comes down to it. You should expect the software to make up the difference in price if they were to unbundle it. Heck, I would expect it to be MORE if they're forced into having to deal with third party vendors that are pointing fingers at software problems vs. hardware problems and wasting Sun support engineers valuable time. I think you'd find yourself unpleasantly surprised at the end price tag. --Tim ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
Hi, I can agree that the software is the one that really has the added value, but to my opinion allowing a stack like Fishworks to run outside the Sun Unified Storage would lead to lower price per unit(Fishwork license) but maybe increase revenue. Why an increase in revenues? Well, i assume that alot of customers would buy the Fishworks to put into they XYZ high-end server. I often find alot of customers that say that it's far more easy to convince the Board of Directors to buy software rather than hardware or a appliance.. Maybe the first step could be the possibility to run Fishworks in any Sun server without the need to buy their Unified Storage server. In this way the support for the software and hardware would come from same vendor, therefore avoiding the dance between multiple vendor when it comes to fixing issues. Anyway, only time/market will say what's the best approach. Bruno Tim Cook wrote: On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 2:35 AM, Bruno Sousa bso...@epinfante.com mailto:bso...@epinfante.com wrote: Hi all, I fully understand that within a cost effective point of view, developing the fishworks for a reduced set of hardware makes , alot, of sense. However, i think that Sun/Oracle would increase their user base if they make availabe a Fishwork framework certified only for a reduced set of hardware, ie : * it needs Western Digital HDD firmware version x.y.z * it needs a SAS/SATA controller from a specific brand, model and firmare ( LSI SAS1068E ) * if SSD's are used they need to be from vendor X with firmware Y * the system motherboard chipset needs to be from vendor X or Y and not from Z Within this possible landscape i'm pretty sure that alot more customers would pay for the Fishworks stack and support, given the fact that not all customers need aKa can afford, the Unified Storage platform from Sun. Anyway..Fishworks it's an awesome product! Congratulations for the extreme good job. Regards, Bruno You're making a very, very bad assumption that the price of Fishworks would be cheap for just the software. Sun hardware does not cost that much more than their competitors when it comes down to it. You should expect the software to make up the difference in price if they were to unbundle it. Heck, I would expect it to be MORE if they're forced into having to deal with third party vendors that are pointing fingers at software problems vs. hardware problems and wasting Sun support engineers valuable time. I think you'd find yourself unpleasantly surprised at the end price tag. --Tim -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by *MailScanner* http://www.mailscanner.info/, and is believed to be clean. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
On Oct 27, 2009, at 12:35 AM, Bruno Sousa wrote: Hi all, I fully understand that within a cost effective point of view, developing the fishworks for a reduced set of hardware makes , alot, of sense. However, i think that Sun/Oracle would increase their user base if they make availabe a Fishwork framework certified only for a reduced set of hardware, ie : • it needs Western Digital HDD firmware version x.y.z • it needs a SAS/SATA controller from a specific brand, model and firmare ( LSI SAS1068E ) • if SSD's are used they need to be from vendor X with firmware Y • the system motherboard chipset needs to be from vendor X or Y and not from Z Do not underestimate the cost and complexity of maintaining compatibility matrices (I call them sparse matrices for a reason :-) Within this possible landscape i'm pretty sure that alot more customers would pay for the Fishworks stack and support, given the fact that not all customers need aKa can afford, the Unified Storage platform from Sun. There are competitors delivered as software-only: NexentaStor seems to be well designed and EON is progressing nicely. -- richard Anyway..Fishworks it's an awesome product! Congratulations for the extreme good job. Regards, Bruno Adam Leventhal wrote: With that said I'm concerned that there appears to be a fork between the opensource version of ZFS and ZFS that is part of the Sun/Oracle FishWorks 7nnn series appliances. I understand (implicitly) that Sun (/Oracle) as a commercial concern, is free to choose their own priorities in terms of how they use their own IP (Intellectual Property) - in this case, the source for the ZFS filesystem. Hey Al, I'm unaware of specific plans for management either at Sun or at Oracle, but from an engineering perspective suffice it to say that it is simpler and therefore more cost effective to develop for a single, unified code base, to amortize the cost of testing those modifications, and to leverage the enthusiastic ZFS community to assist with the development and testing of ZFS. Again, this isn't official policy, just the simple facts on the ground from engineering. I'm not sure what would lead you to believe that there is fork between the open source / OpenSolaris ZFS and what we have in Fishworks. Indeed, we've made efforts to make sure there is a single ZFS for the reason stated above. Any differences that exist are quickly migrated to ON as you can see from the consistent work of Eric Schrock. Adam -- Adam Leventhal, Fishworkshttp://blogs.sun.com/ahl ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
I can agree that the software is the one that really has the added value, but to my opinion allowing a stack like Fishworks to run outside the Sun Unified Storage would lead to lower price per unit(Fishwork license) but maybe increase revenue. I'm afraid I don't see that argument at all; I think that the economics that you're advocating would be more than undermined by the necessarily higher costs of validating and supporting a broader range of hardware and firmware... - Bryan -- Bryan Cantrill, Sun Microsystems Fishworks. http://blogs.sun.com/bmc ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
On Tue, 27 Oct 2009, Bruno Sousa wrote: I can agree that the software is the one that really has the added value, but to my opinion allowing a stack like Fishworks to run outside the Sun Unified Storage would lead to lower price per unit(Fishwork license) but maybe increase revenue. Why an increase in revenues? Well, i assume that alot of customers would buy the Fishworks to put into they XYZ high-end server. Fishworks products (products that the Fishworks team developed) are designed, tweaked, and tuned for particular hardware configurations. It is not like general purpose OpenSolaris where the end user gets to experiment with hardware configurations and tunings to get the best performance (but might not achieve it). Fishworks engineers are even known to holler at the drives as part of the rigorous product testing. Bob -- Bob Friesenhahn bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ GraphicsMagick Maintainer,http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/ ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
Hi Adam, thank you for your precise statement. Be it only from an engineering standpoint, this is the kind of argumentation which I was expecting (and hoping for). I'm not sure what would lead you to believe that there is fork between the open source / OpenSolaris ZFS and what we have in Fishworks. I've caught myself thinking along these lines a couple of weeks ago before the fix for http://bugs.opensolaris.org/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6604403 got integrated. I had thought they must have that fix in fishworks already, and I am glad to see that it's been put back into snv_125. At any rate, I think that the main selling point for 7xxxs is really the add on s/w and I believe that making the core technology openly available will strengthen the product rather than weakening it. Thank you all for your great work, Nils ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
On Oct 27, 2009, at 2:00 PM, Bryan Cantrill wrote: I can agree that the software is the one that really has the added value, but to my opinion allowing a stack like Fishworks to run outside the Sun Unified Storage would lead to lower price per unit(Fishwork license) but maybe increase revenue. I'm afraid I don't see that argument at all; I think that the economics that you're advocating would be more than undermined by the necessarily higher costs of validating and supporting a broader range of hardware and firmware... (Just playing Devil's Advocate here) There could be no economics at all. A basic warranty would be provided but running a standalone product is a wholly on your own proposition once one ventures outside a very small hardware support matrix. Perhaps Fishworks/AK would have a OpenSolaris edition - leave the bulk of the actual hardware support up to a support infrastructure that's already geared towards making wide ranges of hardware supportable - OpenSolaris/Solaris, after all, does allow that. Perhaps this could be a version of Fishworks that's not as integrated with what you get on a SUS platform; if some of the Fishworks functionality that depends on a precise hardware combo could be reduced or generalized, perhaps it's worth consideration. Knowing the little I do about what's going on under the hood of a SUS system, I wouldn't expect the version of Fishworks uses on the SUS systems to have 100% parity with a unbundled Fishworks edition - but the core features, by and large, would convey. /dale ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
On Oct 27, 2009, at 2:58 PM, Bryan Cantrill wrote: I can agree that the software is the one that really has the added value, but to my opinion allowing a stack like Fishworks to run outside the Sun Unified Storage would lead to lower price per unit(Fishwork license) but maybe increase revenue. I'm afraid I don't see that argument at all; I think that the economics that you're advocating would be more than undermined by the necessarily higher costs of validating and supporting a broader range of hardware and firmware... (Just playing Devil's Advocate here) There could be no economics at all. A basic warranty would be provided but running a standalone product is a wholly on your own proposition once one ventures outside a very small hardware support matrix. Perhaps Fishworks/AK would have a OpenSolaris edition - leave the bulk of the actual hardware support up to a support infrastructure that's already geared towards making wide ranges of hardware supportable - OpenSolaris/Solaris, after all, does allow that. Perhaps this could be a version of Fishworks that's not as integrated with what you get on a SUS platform; if some of the Fishworks functionality that depends on a precise hardware combo could be reduced or generalized, perhaps it's worth consideration. Knowing the little I do about what's going on under the hood of a SUS system, I wouldn't expect the version of Fishworks uses on the SUS systems to have 100% parity with a unbundled Fishworks edition - but the core features, by and large, would convey. Why would we do this? I'm all for zero-cost endeavors, but this isn't zero-cost -- and I'm having a hard time seeing the business case here, especially when we have so many paying customers for whom the business case for our time and energy is crystal clear... Hey, I was just offering food for thought from the technical end :) Of course the cost in man hours to attain a reasonable, unbundled version would have to be justifiable. If that aspect isn't currently justifiable, then that's as far as the conversation needs to go. However, times change and one day demand could very well justify the business costs. /dale ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
I can agree that the software is the one that really has the added value, but to my opinion allowing a stack like Fishworks to run outside the Sun Unified Storage would lead to lower price per unit(Fishwork license) but maybe increase revenue. I'm afraid I don't see that argument at all; I think that the economics that you're advocating would be more than undermined by the necessarily higher costs of validating and supporting a broader range of hardware and firmware... (Just playing Devil's Advocate here) There could be no economics at all. A basic warranty would be provided but running a standalone product is a wholly on your own proposition once one ventures outside a very small hardware support matrix. Perhaps Fishworks/AK would have a OpenSolaris edition - leave the bulk of the actual hardware support up to a support infrastructure that's already geared towards making wide ranges of hardware supportable - OpenSolaris/Solaris, after all, does allow that. Perhaps this could be a version of Fishworks that's not as integrated with what you get on a SUS platform; if some of the Fishworks functionality that depends on a precise hardware combo could be reduced or generalized, perhaps it's worth consideration. Knowing the little I do about what's going on under the hood of a SUS system, I wouldn't expect the version of Fishworks uses on the SUS systems to have 100% parity with a unbundled Fishworks edition - but the core features, by and large, would convey. Why would we do this? I'm all for zero-cost endeavors, but this isn't zero-cost -- and I'm having a hard time seeing the business case here, especially when we have so many paying customers for whom the business case for our time and energy is crystal clear... - Bryan -- Bryan Cantrill, Sun Microsystems Fishworks. http://blogs.sun.com/bmc ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 2:13 PM, Dale Ghent da...@elemental.org wrote: On Oct 27, 2009, at 2:58 PM, Bryan Cantrill wrote: I can agree that the software is the one that really has the added value, but to my opinion allowing a stack like Fishworks to run outside the Sun Unified Storage would lead to lower price per unit(Fishwork license) but maybe increase revenue. I'm afraid I don't see that argument at all; I think that the economics that you're advocating would be more than undermined by the necessarily higher costs of validating and supporting a broader range of hardware and firmware... (Just playing Devil's Advocate here) There could be no economics at all. A basic warranty would be provided but running a standalone product is a wholly on your own proposition once one ventures outside a very small hardware support matrix. Perhaps Fishworks/AK would have a OpenSolaris edition - leave the bulk of the actual hardware support up to a support infrastructure that's already geared towards making wide ranges of hardware supportable - OpenSolaris/Solaris, after all, does allow that. Perhaps this could be a version of Fishworks that's not as integrated with what you get on a SUS platform; if some of the Fishworks functionality that depends on a precise hardware combo could be reduced or generalized, perhaps it's worth consideration. Knowing the little I do about what's going on under the hood of a SUS system, I wouldn't expect the version of Fishworks uses on the SUS systems to have 100% parity with a unbundled Fishworks edition - but the core features, by and large, would convey. Why would we do this? I'm all for zero-cost endeavors, but this isn't zero-cost -- and I'm having a hard time seeing the business case here, especially when we have so many paying customers for whom the business case for our time and energy is crystal clear... Hey, I was just offering food for thought from the technical end :) Of course the cost in man hours to attain a reasonable, unbundled version would have to be justifiable. If that aspect isn't currently justifiable, then that's as far as the conversation needs to go. However, times change and one day demand could very well justify the business costs. /dale The problem is, most of the things that make fishworks desirable are the things that wouldn't work. Want to light up a failed drive with an LED? Clustering? Timeouts for failed hardware? The fact of the matter is, people asking for this are people that aren't willing to spend the money that Sun would be asking for anyways. I mean, seriously, a 7110 is $10,000 LIST! Assuming you absolutely despise bartering on price, you can get the thing for 20% off just by using try and buy. If you're balking at that price, you wouldn't like the price of the software. No amount of but you don't have to support it is going to change that. I think you're failing to take into consideration the PR suicide it would be for Sun to offer fishworks on any platform people want, offer support contracts (that's the ONLY way this will make them money), and then turn around and tell people the reasony feature XYZ isnt' working is because their hardware isn't supported... oh, and they have no plans to ever add support either. I honestly can't believe this is even a discussion. What next, are you going to ask NetApp to support ONTAP on Dell systems, and EMC to support Enginuity on HP blades? Just because the underpinnings are based on an open source OS that supports many platforms doesn't mean this customized build can or ever should. And one last example... QLogic and Brocade FC switches run Linux... I wouldn't expect or ask them to make a version that I could run on a desktop full of HBA's to act as my very own FC switch even though it is entirely possible for them to do so. And just as a reminder... if you look back through the archives, I am FAR from a Sun fanboy... I just feel you guys aren't even grounded in reality when making these requests. --Tim ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
are you going to ask NetApp to support ONTAP on Dell systems, well, ONTAP 5.0 is built on freebsd, so it wouldn't be too hard to boot on dell hardware. Hay, at least it can do aggregates larger than 16T now... http://www.netapp.com/us/library/technical-reports/tr-3786.html Rob ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
Bruno Sousa wrote: Hi, I can agree that the software is the one that really has the added value, but to my opinion allowing a stack like Fishworks to run outside the Sun Unified Storage would lead to lower price per unit(Fishwork license) but maybe increase revenue. Why an increase in revenues? Well, i assume that alot of customers would buy the Fishworks to put into they XYZ high-end server. But in Bryan's blog.. http://blogs.sun.com/bmc/date/200811 "but one that also embedded an apt acronym: "FISH", Mike explained, stood for "fully-integrated software and hardware" -- which is exactly what we wanted to go build. I agreed that it captured us perfectly -- and Fishworks was born." Bruno I agree it would be great to have this sort of BUI on OpenSolaris, for example it makes CIFS integration in a AD/Windows shop a breeze, even I got it to work in a couple of minutes, but this would not be FISH. What the Fishworks team have shown is that Sun can make a admin GUI that is easy to use if they have a goal. Perhaps Oracle will help, but I see more lost sales of Solaris due it it being "difficult to manage" than any other reason. We may all not like MS Windows, but you can't say it's not easy to use. Compare it's RBAC implementation with Solaris. One is a straight forward tick GUI (admittedly not very extensible as far as I can see), the other a complete nightmare of files that need editing with vi! Guess which one is used the most? OpenSolaris is getting there, but 99% of all Sun's customers never see it as they are on Solaris 10. I recently bought a laptop just to run OpenSolaris and most things "just work"; it's my preferred desktop at home, but it still only does the simple stuff that Mac and Windows have done for years. Using any of the advance features however requires a degree in Systems Engineering. Ever wondered what makes Apple so successful? Apple makes FISH. www.eagle.co.nz This email is confidential and may be legally privileged. If received in error please destroy and immediately notify us. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
Trevor, Could not agree more, but not every costumer likes to have only a fancy GUI, even that this GUI is very well designed. However my point of view is based on the fact that the part of the software behind the Fishworks could be possible to install in other Sun servers, besides the 7xxx series. Regarding APPLE...well they have marketing gurus Bruno On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:47:31 +1300, Trevor Pretty wrote: Bruno Sousa wrote: Hi, I can agree that the software is the one that really has the added value, but to my opinion allowing a stack like Fishworks to run outside the Sun Unified Storage would lead to lower price per unit(Fishwork license) but maybe increase revenue. Why an increase in revenues? Well, i assume that alot of customers would buy the Fishworks to put into they XYZ high-end server. But in Bryan's blog.. http://blogs.sun.com/bmc/date/200811 [1] but one that also embedded an apt acronym: FISH, Mike explained, stood for fully-integrated software and hardware -- which is exactly what we wanted to go build. I agreed that it captured us perfectly -- and Fishworks was born. Bruno I agree it would be great to have this sort of BUI on OpenSolaris, for example it makes CIFS integration in a AD/Windows shop a breeze, even I got it to work in a couple of minutes, but this would not be FISH. What the Fishworks team have shown is that Sun can make a admin GUI that is easy to use if they have a goal. Perhaps Oracle will help, but I see more lost sales of Solaris due it it being difficult to manage than any other reason. We may all not like MS Windows, but you can't say it's not easy to use. Compare it's RBAC implementation with Solaris. One is a straight forward tick GUI (admittedly not very extensible as far as I can see), the other a complete nightmare of files that need editing with vi! Guess which one is used the most? OpenSolaris is getting there, but 99% of all Sun's customers never see it as they are on Solaris 10. I recently bought a laptop just to run OpenSolaris and most things just work; it's my preferred desktop at home, but it still only does the simple stuff that Mac and Windows have done for years. Using any of the advance features however requires a degree in Systems Engineering. Ever wondered what makes Apple so successful? Apple makes FISH. __ www.eagle.co.nz [2] This email is confidential and may be legally privileged. If received in error please destroy and immediately notify us. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MAILSCANNER [3], and is believed to be clean. -- Bruno Sousa Links: -- [1] http://blogs.sun.com/bmc/date/200811 [2] http://www.eagle.co.nz/ [3] http://www.mailscanner.info/ -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. inline: smiley-laughing.gif___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
I just curious to see how much effort would it take to put the software of FISH running within a Sun X4275... Anyway..lets wait and see. Bruno On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:29:24 -0500 (CDT), Bob Friesenhahn bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us wrote: On Tue, 27 Oct 2009, Bruno Sousa wrote: I can agree that the software is the one that really has the added value, but to my opinion allowing a stack like Fishworks to run outside the Sun Unified Storage would lead to lower price per unit(Fishwork license) but maybe increase revenue. Why an increase in revenues? Well, i assume that alot of customers would buy the Fishworks to put into they XYZ high-end server. Fishworks products (products that the Fishworks team developed) are designed, tweaked, and tuned for particular hardware configurations. It is not like general purpose OpenSolaris where the end user gets to experiment with hardware configurations and tunings to get the best performance (but might not achieve it). Fishworks engineers are even known to holler at the drives as part of the rigorous product testing. Bob -- Bob Friesenhahn bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ GraphicsMagick Maintainer,http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/ -- Bruno Sousa -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
Hi, Given the fact that i worked in the Healthcare industry and alot of my former customers wished to be able to run the former Sun NAS 5310 software in other hardware, i can see a interesting possible business case. In my former job, my customers liked the software used in the Sun StorageTek NAS appliance, but very few of them liked the concept of appliance..they prefer to have the same software in a non-appliance configuration, even if that means that SUN only has 1 server to support such a solution. Anyway i fully understand that the FISHworks is a combination of hw with software with some specific targets in mind, and for that i think FISHworks is the best of what the market has to offer these days... Bruno On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:58:19 +, Bryan Cantrill b...@eng.sun.com wrote: I can agree that the software is the one that really has the added value, but to my opinion allowing a stack like Fishworks to run outside the Sun Unified Storage would lead to lower price per unit(Fishwork license) but maybe increase revenue. I'm afraid I don't see that argument at all; I think that the economics that you're advocating would be more than undermined by the necessarily higher costs of validating and supporting a broader range of hardware and firmware... (Just playing Devil's Advocate here) There could be no economics at all. A basic warranty would be provided but running a standalone product is a wholly on your own proposition once one ventures outside a very small hardware support matrix. Perhaps Fishworks/AK would have a OpenSolaris edition - leave the bulk of the actual hardware support up to a support infrastructure that's already geared towards making wide ranges of hardware supportable - OpenSolaris/Solaris, after all, does allow that. Perhaps this could be a version of Fishworks that's not as integrated with what you get on a SUS platform; if some of the Fishworks functionality that depends on a precise hardware combo could be reduced or generalized, perhaps it's worth consideration. Knowing the little I do about what's going on under the hood of a SUS system, I wouldn't expect the version of Fishworks uses on the SUS systems to have 100% parity with a unbundled Fishworks edition - but the core features, by and large, would convey. Why would we do this? I'm all for zero-cost endeavors, but this isn't zero-cost -- and I'm having a hard time seeing the business case here, especially when we have so many paying customers for whom the business case for our time and energy is crystal clear... - Bryan -- Bryan Cantrill, Sun Microsystems Fishworks. http://blogs.sun.com/bmc ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss -- Bruno Sousa -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
Hi, Maybe during this emails you have missed the point that no one is requesting anything..we are just discussing a possible usage of FISHworks outside of the 7xxx series..more specific in other Sun Server. If i choose the personal point of view, my biggest wish is that i would love to run FISHwork in something else rather than a appliance..who knows, maybe Solaris 11 within a Sun X4275 instead of a 71110. Bruno On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:29:57 -0500, Tim Cook wrote: On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 2:13 PM, Dale Ghent wrote: On Oct 27, 2009, at 2:58 PM, Bryan Cantrill wrote: I can agree that the software is the one that really has the added value, but to my opinion allowing a stack like Fishworks to run outside the Sun Unified Storage would lead to lower price per unit(Fishwork license) but maybe increase revenue. I'm afraid I don't see that argument at all; I think that the economics that you're advocating would be more than undermined by the necessarily higher costs of validating and supporting a broader range of hardware and firmware... (Just playing Devil's Advocate here) There could be no economics at all. A basic warranty would be provided but running a standalone product is a wholly on your own proposition once one ventures outside a very small hardware support matrix. Perhaps Fishworks/AK would have a OpenSolaris edition - leave the bulk of the actual hardware support up to a support infrastructure that's already geared towards making wide ranges of hardware supportable - OpenSolaris/Solaris, after all, does allow that. Perhaps this could be a version of Fishworks that's not as integrated with what you get on a SUS platform; if some of the Fishworks functionality that depends on a precise hardware combo could be reduced or generalized, perhaps it's worth consideration. Knowing the little I do about what's going on under the hood of a SUS system, I wouldn't expect the version of Fishworks uses on the SUS systems to have 100% parity with a unbundled Fishworks edition - but the core features, by and large, would convey. Why would we do this? I'm all for zero-cost endeavors, but this isn't zero-cost -- and I'm having a hard time seeing the business case here, especially when we have so many paying customers for whom the business case for our time and energy is crystal clear... Hey, I was just offering food for thought from the technical end :) Of course the cost in man hours to attain a reasonable, unbundled version would have to be justifiable. If that aspect isn't currently justifiable, then that's as far as the conversation needs to go. However, times change and one day demand could very well justify the business costs. /dale The problem is, most of the things that make fishworks desirable are the things that wouldn't work. Want to light up a failed drive with an LED? Clustering? Timeouts for failed hardware? The fact of the matter is, people asking for this are people that aren't willing to spend the money that Sun would be asking for anyways. I mean, seriously, a 7110 is $10,000 LIST! Assuming you absolutely despise bartering on price, you can get the thing for 20% off just by using try and buy. If you're balking at that price, you wouldn't like the price of the software. No amount of but you don't have to support it is going to change that. I think you're failing to take into consideration the PR suicide it would be for Sun to offer fishworks on any platform people want, offer support contracts (that's the ONLY way this will make them money), and then turn around and tell people the reasony feature XYZ isnt' working is because their hardware isn't supported... oh, and they have no plans to ever add support either. I honestly can't believe this is even a discussion. What next, are you going to ask NetApp to support ONTAP on Dell systems, and EMC to support Enginuity on HP blades? Just because the underpinnings are based on an open source OS that supports many platforms doesn't mean this customized build can or ever should. And one last example... QLogic and Brocade FC switches run Linux... I wouldn't expect or ask them to make a version that I could run on a desktop full of HBA's to act as my very own FC switch even though it is entirely possible for them to do so. And just as a reminder... if you look back through the archives, I am FAR from a Sun fanboy... I just feel you guys aren't even grounded in reality when making these requests. --Tim -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MAILSCANNER [2], and is believed to be clean. -- Bruno Sousa Links: -- [1] mailto:da...@elemental.org [2] http://www.mailscanner.info/ -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
As far as I know, its an effort! Not just for x4275 specifically, but in general with any other x86 hardware and storage oriented software. A lot of work required to support a final solution as well. What Nexenta does with its version of NexentaStor is enabling third-party Partners to integrate software into a HW/SW solutions ready for production use. There is even a social network for Nexenta partners, where Partners talks to each other as well as to Nexenta experts and polishing their final NexentaStor solutions. Its a process and it works! List of Partners: http://www.nexenta.com/partners Bruno Sousa wrote: I just curious to see how much effort would it take to put the software of FISH running within a Sun X4275... Anyway..lets wait and see. Bruno On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:29:24 -0500 (CDT), Bob Friesenhahn bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us wrote: On Tue, 27 Oct 2009, Bruno Sousa wrote: I can agree that the software is the one that really has the added value, but to my opinion allowing a stack like Fishworks to run outside the Sun Unified Storage would lead to lower price per unit(Fishwork license) but maybe increase revenue. Why an increase in revenues? Well, i assume that alot of customers would buy the Fishworks to put into they XYZ high-end server. Fishworks products (products that the Fishworks team developed) are designed, tweaked, and tuned for particular hardware configurations. It is not like general purpose OpenSolaris where the end user gets to experiment with hardware configurations and tunings to get the best performance (but might not achieve it). Fishworks engineers are even known to holler at the drives as part of the rigorous product testing. Bob -- Bob Friesenhahn bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ GraphicsMagick Maintainer,http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/ ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
On Tue, Oct 27 at 18:58, Bryan Cantrill wrote: Why would we do this? I'm all for zero-cost endeavors, but this isn't zero-cost -- and I'm having a hard time seeing the business case here, especially when we have so many paying customers for whom the business case for our time and energy is crystal clear... - Bryan I don't have a need for a large 7110 box, my group's file serving needs are quite small. I decided on a Dell T610 running OpenSolaris, with half the drives populated now and half to be populated as we get close to filling them up. Pair of mirrored vdevs for performance, with an SSD cache. I'd have loved to have, instead, the nice fishworks gui interface to the whole thing, and if that existed on something like an X2270, that's what we would have bought instead of the Dell box. Ultimately, I wanted the simplicity of a Drobo, capable of saturating a Gig-E port or two, in an easy to maintain and administer system. One and a half out of three ain't bad, but Fishworks GUI on a 4-disk X2270 would have been a 3 for 3 solution I believe. We just can't afford to spend $8-10k to try a 7110 which is likely complete overkill for our needs, and we have no expectation of our business growing into it within the next two years. $2k was our absolute ceiling for a trial purchase, and I knew that if my OpenSolaris experiment didn't work out, I could just repurpose the Dell box with Debian, EXT3, software RAID and Samba and get a 75-80% solution. Yes, this may not make business sense for Sun-as-structured, but someone will figure out how to scratch that itch because it's real for a LOT of small businesses. They want that low cost entry into a business-grade NAS without having to build it themselves, something that's a step up from a whitebox 2-disk mirror from some no-name vendor who won't exist in 6 months. --eric PS: Not having enough engineers to support a growing and paying customer base is a *good* problem to have. The opposite is much, much worse. -- Eric D. Mudama edmud...@mail.bounceswoosh.org ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 12:15 AM, Eric D. Mudama edmud...@bounceswoosh.orgwrote: On Tue, Oct 27 at 18:58, Bryan Cantrill wrote: Why would we do this? I'm all for zero-cost endeavors, but this isn't zero-cost -- and I'm having a hard time seeing the business case here, especially when we have so many paying customers for whom the business case for our time and energy is crystal clear... - Bryan I don't have a need for a large 7110 box, my group's file serving needs are quite small. I decided on a Dell T610 running OpenSolaris, with half the drives populated now and half to be populated as we get close to filling them up. Pair of mirrored vdevs for performance, with an SSD cache. I'd have loved to have, instead, the nice fishworks gui interface to the whole thing, and if that existed on something like an X2270, that's what we would have bought instead of the Dell box. Ultimately, I wanted the simplicity of a Drobo, capable of saturating a Gig-E port or two, in an easy to maintain and administer system. One and a half out of three ain't bad, but Fishworks GUI on a 4-disk X2270 would have been a 3 for 3 solution I believe. We just can't afford to spend $8-10k to try a 7110 which is likely complete overkill for our needs, and we have no expectation of our business growing into it within the next two years. $2k was our absolute ceiling for a trial purchase, and I knew that if my OpenSolaris experiment didn't work out, I could just repurpose the Dell box with Debian, EXT3, software RAID and Samba and get a 75-80% solution. Yes, this may not make business sense for Sun-as-structured, but someone will figure out how to scratch that itch because it's real for a LOT of small businesses. They want that low cost entry into a business-grade NAS without having to build it themselves, something that's a step up from a whitebox 2-disk mirror from some no-name vendor who won't exist in 6 months. --eric PS: Not having enough engineers to support a growing and paying customer base is a *good* problem to have. The opposite is much, much worse. So use Nexenta? --Tim ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
Tim Cook wrote: PS: Not having enough engineers to support a growing and paying customer base is a *good* problem to have. The opposite is much, much worse. So use Nexenta? Got data you care about? Verify extensively before you jump to that ship.. :) ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] zfs code and fishworks fork
With that said I'm concerned that there appears to be a fork between the opensource version of ZFS and ZFS that is part of the Sun/Oracle FishWorks 7nnn series appliances. I understand (implicitly) that Sun (/Oracle) as a commercial concern, is free to choose their own priorities in terms of how they use their own IP (Intellectual Property) - in this case, the source for the ZFS filesystem. Hey Al, I'm unaware of specific plans for management either at Sun or at Oracle, but from an engineering perspective suffice it to say that it is simpler and therefore more cost effective to develop for a single, unified code base, to amortize the cost of testing those modifications, and to leverage the enthusiastic ZFS community to assist with the development and testing of ZFS. Again, this isn't official policy, just the simple facts on the ground from engineering. I'm not sure what would lead you to believe that there is fork between the open source / OpenSolaris ZFS and what we have in Fishworks. Indeed, we've made efforts to make sure there is a single ZFS for the reason stated above. Any differences that exist are quickly migrated to ON as you can see from the consistent work of Eric Schrock. Adam -- Adam Leventhal, Fishworkshttp://blogs.sun.com/ahl ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
