Anyone using Nexenta ZFS?

[brutalizer]

Nexenta is the fastest growing storage company today:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/04/nexenta_fastest_growing_storage_start/

It is based on OpenSolaris and runs ZFS. They have several Enterprise customers, and will be releasing a 1 million IOPS rack server in 2U soon:
http://www.nexenta.com/corp/blog/2011/12/21/ten-predictions-for-2012/

They also have partners selling 1 PB Nexenta storage servers:
http://www.aberdeeninc.com/abcatg/petarack.htm

Anyone tried their OpenSolaris distro, tailored to storage? They were one major force in rewriting the proprietary closed bits in OpenSolaris, to a completely opened up version called Illumos, resulting in distros OpenIndiana and the new Illumian.

 

[danswartz]

I am running their community NCP version. I know Gea prefers OI, but I like the debian interface to some things. I don't modify/patch/change a lot, so I don't care if it is not updated frequently.

 

[brutalizer]

The new Illumian distro, that is coming very soon, will be using debian interface.

Do you think that Nexenta works good? Are there much problems?

 

[danswartz]

Works fine for me. Slightly older kernel than OI, but I don't care about cutting edge, so it's fine here...

 

[Origin_Unknown]

from what i understand doesnt nexenta use an older version of ZFS?

 

[danswartz]

Depends on what you mean by 'older'. It's the same version of pool/fs (I believe) as OI. I have fs version 5 and pool version 28. I know the latest solaris 11 has encryption, which is newer...

 

[gasu]

I'm trying the enterprise edition and loving it , just wish they release a version more catered for home and a more friendly price , since the free version doesn't work for me due to exceeding the hard drive space it offers (over 32tb)

 

[danswartz]

Uh, well, I doubt 99.99% of the home market use more than their 18TB limit, so I don't see them being that unfriendly...

 

[_Gea]

I'm trying the enterprise edition and loving it , just wish they release a version more catered for home and a more friendly price , since the free version doesn't work for me due to exceeding the hard drive space it offers (over 32tb)

NCP/ NexentaCore3 (=NexentaStor3 - Support - Nexenta Web-UI - comercial plugins + not restricted to storage only) has no capacity limit.
But NexentaCore3 is end of live and no longer available. The successor Illumian is on the way.
It will be the base of next NexentaStor 4.0

Illumian (from Illumos + Debian) will be
- Based on Illumos (same as OpenIndiana)
- Apps and repository are common with OpenIndiana (current NCP uses old and not updated apps from Ubuntu)
- Package management may be Debian like (apt ..) instead of Solaris/ OpenIndiana IPS (pkg ...)

 

[gasu]

Glad to hear , grabbed illumian and will be testing it

Cheers

 

[Aesma]

Uh, well, I doubt 99.99% of the home market use more than their 18TB limit, so I don't see them being that unfriendly...

Well, ZFS is not tailored to use on a couple of hard drives, so I tend to disagree. When you go the ZFS way you easily have 10 drives. And with multi TB drives being the norm...

 

[danswartz]

That's not the point though. They are aiming at 'home users'. If you can provide any stats at all that more than a small fraction of home users are impacted by the 18TB limit, I will concede the argument. They have to make money somehow on this product, and if businesses could just get a free license, no more nexenta.

 

[_Gea]

That's not the point though. They are aiming at 'home users'. If you can provide any stats at all that more than a small fraction of home users are impacted by the 18TB limit, I will concede the argument. They have to make money somehow on this product, and if businesses could just get a free license, no more nexenta.

I suppose 18 TB is enough for @home and for free.
My main problem with NexentaStor outside commercia storage use cases is
its restriction to storage-only. With Enterprise Edition, you are not allowed to use shell or
other apps, with Community Edition you should not - you even have no regular shell per default.
NexentaCore/Illumian is more a general use Core Server-OS while OpenIndiana is usable for Desktop and Server with a better usability due to its GUI.

OpenIndiana or NexentaCore/ Illumian?
Thats not essential, just a question wether you want to use it Linux-like or Solaris-like or you prefer a GUI

I would consider NexentaStor if the use-case is storage-only or if I intend to switch to Enterprise Edition with support
or use it and the limitation does not matter. In Enterprise environments its the only alternative to Oracle Solaris 11 if you need support.

I am happy to have these options beside the fall-back option to FreeBSD and Linux
but currenty the Solaris family is where the action is for ZFS.

edit: not to forget: Nexenta is the major enterprise behind Illumos and a free Solaris forked Open Source OS.
Without Nexenta it might not have been a free option to closed source Oracle Solaris

I wish them to be the next RedHat or netApp with a OpenSource Base

 

[danswartz]

Good points.