On 08/13/2010 10:21 PM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
Very few people would bother paying for solaris/zfs if they couldn't try it
for free and get a good taste of what it's valuable for.
My guess is that the theoretical Solaris Express 11 will be crippled by any or
all of: missing features, artificial limits on functionality, or a restrictive
license. I consider the latter most likely, much like the OTN downloads of
Oracle DB, where you can download and run it for development purposes, but don't
even THINK of using it as a production server for your home or small business.
Of course, an Oracle DB is overkill for such a purpose anyway, but that's a
different kettle of fish.
For me, Solaris had zero mindshare since its beginning, on account of being
prohibitively expensive. When OpenSolaris came out, I basically ignored it once
I found out that it was not completely open source, since I figured that there
was too great a risk of a train wreck like we have now. Then, I decided this
winter to give ZFS a spin, decided I liked it, and built a home server around it
- and within weeks Oracle took over, tore up the tracks without telling anybody,
and made the train wreck I feared into a reality. I should have listened to my
own advice.
As much as I'd like to be proven wrong, I don't expect SX11 to be useful for my
purposes, so my home file server options are:
1. Nexenta Core. It's maintained, and (somewhat) more up-to-date than the late
OpenSolaris. As I've been running Linux since the days when a 486 was a
cutting-edge system, I don't mind having a GNU userland. Of course, now that
Oracle has slammed the door, it'll be difficult for it to move forward - which
leads to:
2. IllumOS. In 20/20 hindsight, a project like this should have begun as soon as
OpenSolaris first came out the door, but better late than never. In the short
term, it's not yet an option, but in the long term, it may be the best (or only)
hope. At the very least, I won't be able to use it until an open mpt driver is
in place.
3. Just stick with b134. Actually, I've managed to compile my way up to b142,
but I'm having trouble getting beyond it - my attempts to install later versions
just result in new boot environments with the old kernel, even with the latest
pkg-gate code in place. Still, even if I get the latest code to install, it's
not viable for the long term unless I'm willing to live with stasis.
4. FreeBSD. I could live with it if I had to, but I'm not fond of its packaging
system; the last time I tried it I couldn't get the package tools to pull a
quick binary update. Even IPS works better. I could go to the ports tree
instead, but if I wanted to spend my time recompiling everything, I'd run Gentoo
instead.
5. Linux/FUSE. It works, but it's slow.
5a. Compile-it-yourself ZFS kernel module for Linux. This would be a hassle
(though DKMS would make it less of an issue), but usable - except that the
current module only supports zvols, so it's not ready yet, unless I wanted to
run ext3-on-zvol. Neither of these solutions are practical for booting from ZFS.
6. Abandon ZFS completely and go back to LVM/MD-RAID. I ran it for years before
switching to ZFS, and it works - but it's a bitter pill to swallow after
drinking the ZFS Kool-Aid.
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