On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 10:18 AM, Onno Benschop <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Today I attended a Sun presentation called "Open Storage Systems". I > attended both for my "day-job", that is, an IT consultant, as well as > wearing my "Ubuntu Server hat". I'm not able to provide you with a > word-for-word, blow-by-blow account of my morning, nor am I wanting to > either promote or bag the presentation. The intent of my email to the > group is to report on a development that I thought might > interact/intersect or be of interest to the team. > > Some disclaimers up front. I am an IT consultant, that is, I solve weird > and wonderful problems for weird and wonderful clients all around the > world, but mostly rural and remote Australia. I've been in this industry > for over 26 years, so I'm probably a lot cynical about "revolutionary" > things. I've never bought any Sun hardware, though a Sparc station did > land on my desk some years ago where I coerced it into running Debian at > the time. I've never deployed a storage system, never bought one and > until recently never needed one. If anything in what I write here is > contradicted by what Sun says, perhaps you should ask Sun before relying > on what I said. > > The presentation attracted me because it was touted as an Open Source > solution and I was interested to know how Sun was dealing with this and > how this might relate to anything I was doing either as a consultant or > as a member of the server team. > > The opening remarks were along the lines of "each CPU in a data centre > achieves about 15% utilisation, and each storage solution is closed, > proprietary, firmware driven hardware that requires additional licenses > and subscriptions to activate new features. Sun has a solution that is > open and will save you up to 90% in your storage deployments". > > At this point I thought, cool, let's see what you got. > > The release discussed the Sun Storage 7000 series which is basically a > Sun box that runs Open Solaris that offers a web-based GUI that allows > you to manage this. The drives are spread among SATA/SAS/SSD (and if I > recall correctly, SCSI as well). A big deal was made of the time that it > takes to get data off a drive and how SSD storage in between the CPU and > the drive would handle this by caching the data in smart ways. (This is > being handled by ZFS.) > > The box is built using Intel and/or AMD processors - the talk was > sponsored by AMD, but I was unclear if the Intel reference was > compatibility, as in an AMD processor that is compatible, or if it was > because Intel also contributes hardware - in any case, I don't think it > matters that much - but I'm sure that there are some reading this who > are cringing at that thoughtless remark - I'm sorry, educate me please :) > > Much was made of services that can be activated, NFS, CIFS, HTTP, FTP, > WebDAV, DNS, NTP, AntiVirus and many others. > > The box is "certified" for MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft, VMware, blah, blah. > (More on that later.) It does iSCSI, block-level stuff, fibre-channel, > and other (mumble) protocols. So it's able to do the same as all the > other storage systems in the world. There are web pages that describe > this and a quick google found this one: > http://blogs.sun.com/studler/entry/new_class_of_storage_systems. > > The web GUI is cute. It shows hardware level information, showing which > DIMM is faulty, allowing you to put a blinking light on a drive to get > the engineer on-site to swap out a drive, serial numbers, etc. Logging > is continuous and data is stored on a system partition. Analysis can be > done over this data and information can be exported via CSV. There is > cool stuff, you can repartition a system from mirrored to raid 6 in > seconds, build a new system in less than 5 minutes from new, comes with > lots of expansion options and appears to be well placed when compared to > other "Enterprise" stuff. Much of this functionality appears to me be > related to ZFS and not the web GUI as such - but I might be wrong. > > The pitch for this seemed to be that this device can replace a whole lot > of infrastructure and because it's open it grows with the developer > community - (that's "us Open Source folks"). > > At this point we got a demo and some point-and-click action. > > Then the presentation was over and we got to ask questions. > > My questions related to some of what was said and I opened up with "How > do I interface this with other stuff? As in, how do I use my software to > talk to your hardware?" The response was not good. Basically, you need > to use their web-interface. > > I asked about web services. Most web-sites these days are not static > files, with a web-server on board, how would I deploy a PHP or a PYTHON > based web application and how does this relate to the HTTP server on > board? The response was that I should run my own web-server hardware and > mount the "appliance" across the network using NFS or CIFS. I began to > wonder what the purpose of the web-server compatibility and service was. > > If I used Active Directory or LDAP to authenticate user share access, > could I use the same infrastructure to manage the actual shares, that > is, could I define and manage my shares in LDAP and have the appliance > use that information. "Sure, you'll need to write the software to do > that, but sure - actually, the answer wasn't that at all, it was 'uhm, > dunno, uhm not in this release.'" > > If I want to manage the thing using HP OpenView, or anything not Sun, > could I do that? "Sure, but you'd need to write your own software to > manage that - actually the answer was, no, but I suppose you could write > software to do that, it's using Open Solaris and the APIs are published." > > If I wanted to have a fail over system, could I do that at a block > level? "No, not in this release." > > How is the Oracle and MySQL certification? "Well, you mount the drive > and it's certified." > > So, if I log-in and add a service, what does that do to my service > agreement? "It voids your agreement." > > So, if I cannot talk to anything not Sun and I cannot install anything > on the device, how is this Open Source? "Well, you need to know that > it's running Open Solaris, so you can build your own system like this > and run with that, but you won't get the web GUI and none of the > integration." > > So, coming in the door thinking, wow, Sun has an Open Storage system > that might be able to be managed and deployed in a Ubuntu Server > environment, I went out the door thinking, Sun has built a system that > could be really nice, but instead they've built another proprietary > solution that doesn't really talk to anything else and cannot really be > managed in anything but a single deployment. > > So, the 15% CPU utilisation is still the same, you cannot use the Sun > based server to run anything because it voids your support contract and > it doesn't talk to anything without voiding your contract. > > Afterwards I had lunch with a guy from LSI where we discussed iSCSI > block level devices also made by Sun. I need to deploy a Windows machine > to manage it and I need to deploy a front end to talk to users. > > So, I suppose you could format the hard-drive(s) on this 7000 series > hardware and install Ubuntu Server, but that seems to miss the point. > (One answer involved installing Windows on the machine :) > > I'm left with a feeling that I'm unsure how and if we could (or should) > evolve Ubuntu Server to integrate with systems like this to make Ubuntu > more enterprise ready. > > It's entirely possible that I've got a distorted picture of I.T. in my > head, one where you can manage your storage in a central location, > regardless of where the actual drive is, that you can refer to it almost > as a cloud and manage the various aspects in an almost transparent > fashion, but thus far this does not appear to be the case. > > I don't know if I did the Sun presentation justice, I'm not a journalist > and I have a bias, but I hope that this gives more people information > about something I attended. If others have seen presentations that they > feel relate to the Ubuntu-Server community, I'd personally love to read > other reports which would allow me to "virtually" attend more > presentations across more areas. > > -- > Onno Benschop > > Connected via Optus B3 at S31°54'06" - E115°50'39" (Yokine, WA) > -- > ()/)/)() ..ASCII for Onno.. > |>>? ..EBCDIC for Onno.. > --- -. -. --- ..Morse for Onno.. > > ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 8888 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > --
Thank you for sharing this with us. It's sure inspirational, but getting to the dissapointments you shared further down the line, I think to myself. Isn't easier to just build your own storage applience? I mean, there are so many open source project which allow you to setup a NFS / SAMBA / SAN / etc server within a few minutes from the CD, onto any hardware. How more difficult will it be to use SSD (which is still very expensive) to run & manage the OS on the device, and then also have all the capabilities of this Sun device? -- Kind Regards Rudi Ahlers -- ubuntu-server mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam
