> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
> On Behalf Of Doug Hughes
> 
> The glitches that we experience are around the occassional kernel hang
> that requires a machine reset. We have one machine that gets a hard-hang
> about once a month. 

I don't know what kind of hardware or OS Doug used, but I'll just throw this
out there and see what happens...

A really common mistake for people to make when implementing a ZFS server is
to put the wrong OS on the wrong hardware.  Even in the day when Dell sold
solaris as a supported OS on their servers...  You can bet Dell servers
didn't get the same kind of treatment and production usage in the Solaris
development & support groups.  Consequently, when I bought solaris on a Dell
server, I had the same stability issues Doug described.  At first, it was
weekly crashes, until we disabled the on-board broadcom NIC in favor of an
add-on Intel NIC.  After that change, it's only monthly crashes.

Most people experiencing such stability issues are essentially trying to
make the system work on generic hardware.  Even Dell, HP, or IBM big name
hardware counts as "generic" in this context, because it's not what's the
primary focus of the development & support groups.

There are only three configurations I would recommend for production usage:
* Solaris on Oracle hardware (Still cheaper than netapp)
* Nexenta on Silicon Mechanics hardware (consult your Nexenta rep for
recommendations)
* Solaris inside a VMware or VirtualBox virtual machine

Anything else, and you might be lucky...  Many people report perfect
success.  But I feel you're taking your chances by experimenting.

FWIW, the ability to run on generic blackbox hardware is still an
attraction.  In a pinch, you know you are not dependent on proprietary
hardware to restore something or experiment with some new feature.  But it's
not what I would recommend for production.

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