[OpenIndiana-discuss] Illumos as a NAS

[Didier Carlier]

On 05 Sep 2012, at 14:21, Magnus <magnus at yonderway.com> wrote:

> 
> On Sep 5, 2012, at 2:59 AM, Didier Carlier wrote:
>> 
>> The use case described is handled perfectly by OSX server ($15 these days...).
>> It might still be a good idea but don't believe that Mac users are waiting for such a NAS without any alternatives…
> 
> My iTunes library is pushing 2TB these days, and I'm not done backing up my large DVD collection yet. I've got a stack of external firewire drives attached to my Mac Mini that are slow (nature of Firewire) and suffer early thermal failure because these cases are designed more for looking slim and attractive on my desk than they are for actively cooling the disks within.  If I want to add new disks to expand my volume, I can't really do that; I have to make a full backup, destroy my original volume, and create a new volume with more disks in it.
> 
> I'm a beta tester for what was TensComplement so I have ZFS on there now, but I still have the limitations of firewire and the consumer level external disk thermal problems.
> 
> I very much have an interest in moving my precious media library to something more robust and performant. 
> 
> OS X Server doesn't fix any of that.
> 
> Meanwhile I've got a ~5 year old AMD machine that used to be a nice Linux desktop, now running Illumos (as of about 8 hours or so ago) and the long slow rsync from my Mac is still going. My disks will be actively cooled by a case with adequate fans. When my 2TB ZFS volume is a little closer to full, I can add another mirrored pair of 2TB disks to my pool in a matter of maybe half an hour tops (including time to physically install the disks). I've also got a pair of SSD's for slog and cache devices to put in there, once I source another SATA controller for the system. I can't do any of that with my Mac Mini.
> 
> I'm also looking at the *five disks* on my desk right now around my monitor, and smiling knowing that they are going away soon.
> 
> -M


I wasn't talking specifically about firewire, a Thunderbolt disk array like the ones from Promise is much faster than firewire and support up to 12 TB.
That might be more expensive but functionally, a Mac mini plus this kind of storage handles your load without any problem.
Now obviously I agree that ZFS has its advantages, but OSX has some too, at least in a full Mac home or SME.