[OpenIndiana-discuss] Install OpenIndiana in an UFS root

[Irek Szczesniak]

On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 9:32 PM, Richard Elling
<richard.elling at richardelling.com> wrote:
> On Sep 9, 2013, at 11:09 AM, Simon Toedt <simon.toedt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 7:52 PM, Peter Tribble <peter.tribble at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> topic says it all. I want to install OpenIndiana on a UFS filesystem. No
>>>> typo. I do not want to use ZFS on my boot disk. Can you choose what
>>>> filesystem you want to use for your root during installation?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Not on OpenIndiana, the whole of packaging etc essentially
>>> requires ZFS root - so the same limitation will likely apply to
>>> any distro using IPS.
>>>
>>> You can install Tribblix to ufs; I'm not aware of any other
>>> distro that offers it as an option. (You might have some joy
>>> with OpenSXCE, although that uses the same Caiman
>>> installer as OI so intercepting it might be tricky.)
>>>
>>> Seriously, though, I would love to know *why* you don't want
>>> to install to ZFS. I can think of several reasons myself (which is
>>> why I added the option to Tribblix) but this is quite a specialist
>>> area, so what's your use case?
>>
>> Running with less memory maybe? ZFS has a well-deserved reputation for
>> being memory hungry, something which keeps Solaris and Illumos out of
>> the cloud business - as the Amazon sales people say you can have six
>> Linux VMs with ext4fs for one Solaris VM with ZFS in the same memory
>> footprint.
>
> Sounds like FUD from a Joyent competitor. Memory is used for cache in both
> cases, so ext4 obviously does a worse job caching than ZFS.

I would not call this FUD. It's a real life observation that I can
have four VMware VMs with Suse Linux running in parallel very
smoothly,  including compiling large projects like the NIH toolchain
(blast etc) without pain.
Running just two Solaris 11 or Openindiana VMs on the same machine
turns the box into a living hell.

The same problem applies to cloud installations where Solaris/Illumos
with ZFS are a serious *PAIN* unless you invest a lot of money. After
all the total cost of ownership running Solaris/Illumos VMs is
significantly higher than doing the same with Linux because of that
'little detail' (and no, memory isn't cheap - not if you multiply the
4GB extra with 4096 nodes to "ZFS'tify", not always can more modules
be added and who pays the extra juice to drive the modules? Memory
consumes power, too)

IMO the big problem here is the *denial* that this is a problem. Each
time the issue comes up (which is quite often) its countered with
arguments like "ZFS is (more) reliable" or "ZFS has snapshots", which
may only of secondary concern in cloud applications.

Irek