Submitted by Nexenta CP RC2 has been released. “OpenSolaris build 80+ (non-debug); project integration: NWS, AVS, COMSTAR, in-kernel CIFS client; apt-clone: ZFS-integrated safe upgrade via remote APT repository; support for in-place (live) and safe upgrades; installer: multiple improvements; Nexenta Zones (multiple improvements); integrated automatic Zone upgrades; started using conventional Debian development cycle.”
NexentaCP was the first OpenSolaris distro to have native ZFS root installer. NexentaCP also beat Indiana to supporting updating the whole OS from an online repository, using ZFS snapshots to allow you to roll back to previous updates.
I’ve used it and it is pretty simple and good. Basically it is OpenSolaris built by people outside Sun, using deb packages and apt to update stuff. The quality produced by just a handful of guys reminds you why competition is a good thing.
It actually differs a lot from OpenSolaris (as distributed by Sun). It’s a GNU base system running on SunOS instead of Linux. Even though the GNU/Kernel naming scheme doesn’t give the whole picture, GNU/Solaris is actually a good description of what’s in it and if you look up http://www.gnusolaris.org you’ll see that it’s the name they used previously.
I have been pricing together a system that meets the ZFS recommendations (64 bit, >=2Gb) to build a new file server.
The ZFS-fuse site seems stale, not sure if anybody is working on it so I don’t think I’ll be running it under Linux.
So that leaves FreeBSD and Solaris.
Maybe I’ll try them both out in a dual boot environment and see which one is easiest to set up with Samba / CIFS, Apache, MySQL, PHP etc.
Samba is the same in both. But OpenSolaris is the only real option for ZFS. ZFS in FreeBSD is “experimental”, which means not even close to mission-critical suitable.
Oh my god. Did I really just read this? 64 bit processor and greater than 2GB of ram just to run a *filesystem*? Better add some memory and processor oomph so that there is something left over to run an application or two.
This is NexentaStor recommendations for Enterprise users.
NexentaCP minimal requirements are in range of 256MB..384MB
I used Nexenta back in the Alpha 5 days, and it’s great. The simplicity of Ubuntu combined with the advanced server features of Solaris. I may have to try this out now.
i just wish that it had sparc support. i realy like the gnu userland and have a strong dislike for the solaris userland. sure you can get gnu user tools to solaris but it’s anoing and linux runs on the sparc machiens but have bad hardware support. nexenta would be the best of two worlds for me
As far as I suspect, a ZFS raid can be read from FreeBSD and Solaris. Therefore you could boot from Solaris and create your ZFS raid, then reboot into FreeBSD and access the ZFS raid.
I am using a ZFS raid at home with Open Solaris. Open Solaris is quite similar to a modern Linux like SuSE. I have 4 Samsung 500GB drives in ZFS raid and it rocks. I am using the “AOC” PCI-X Sata-2 card with 8 Sata connections. It works right of the box with Solaris, in an ordinary PCI slot. Costs around 1200 USD in Sweden.