[OpenIndiana-discuss] To the OmniOS, OI and SmartOS community

Thu May 18 18:30:09 UTC 2017

hello Till

My napp-it storage appliance add-on is currently running and supported 
on OmniOS, OpenIndiana Hipster, Solaris and partly ZoL. I would be very 
glad to add SmartOS but this would require a mechanism to  install 
storage services to global zone, load settings like users or (SMB) 
groups on powerup from datapool and save them on demand to make them 
persistent.

If you ask what I and many users need or want from a free distribution 
compared to OpenIndiana, the answer is a Illumos distribution with 
stables and long term stables, each based on its own repository with 
backported security fixes on the long term stable. This allows to 
evaluate a release and use it with the option to add security or 
bugfixes without jumping to a newer release with newer features and 
possible incompatibilities or new bugs. This is what OmniOS is and for 
me this is what I and many users want. My hope is that this will be 
based on OI snapshots in future as I do not believe that a second fully 
independent community backed Illumos distribution can survice on the 
long run. It will only weaken Illumos in case of a failure and OI in the 
meantime.

SmartOS with a solid commercial background and one additional community 
based Illumos alternative is what I hope for. And the last can only mean 
OpenIndiana + stable add-on.

best regards

Gea

Am 18.05.2017 um 18:31 schrieb Till Wegmüller:
> Hello Guenther
>
> I would pretty much suggest using OpenIndiana to develop solutions 
> like napp-it on top of.
>
> Main reason being that appart from certain vlan taging and lx zone 
> features we have all the technical bells ans whistels that OmniOs and 
> SmartOS have. We just have some different tools. We use the ones 
> Solaris used and don't have high level wrappers like vmadm.
>
>
> If you want to use it to base your napp-it I definately would support 
> you with what I know about the distribution. I could tell you about 
> the Image creation system and other stuff. And I'm sure that others 
> would help out with insights aswell.
>
> What would you need from a Distribution to build your Application on 
> top? Would be interesting to know.
>
> ---
> Greetings
> Till
>
> On 15.05.2017 13:58, Guenther Alka wrote:
>> *Its time to consider pla**n**B/C ??*
>> to: omnios-discuss, openindiana-discuss, smartos-discuss
>>
>> The announcement of OmniTi to cancel OmniOS from now to then is a 
>> real disaster not only for OmniOS users but for the whole Illumos 
>> platform. Many users who want a free Solaris based OS especially in 
>> production environments selected OmniOS as their preferred Illumos 
>> platform mainly with use cases storage and general server applications.
>>
>> The reasons:*OmniOS=**Up to date Illumos*
>> + commercial support option (although way too expensive)
>> + own developments like LX zones integration from SmartOS or drivers
>> + stables/long term stables with very experienced full time staff 
>> (thanks to Dan and Dale again)
>>
>> As OmniTi has released a new stable 151022, I/we have some time maybe 
>> to the end of the year unless OmniOS is out of sync with Illumos in a 
>> non tolerable amount.  Bugfixes of serious problems may be the case 
>> until then (hope so).
>>
>> What are the/my options
>>
>>
>> *Plan A*
>> Hope for a continuation of OmniOS as a well maintained 
>> community/commercial project with further development, ongoing 
>> stables and bugfixes optionally with some paid contributions under 
>> the umbrella of a firm or at least with some experienced members that 
>> were already resonsible for OmniOS or an Illumos distribution and 
>> that can be trusted for next years.
>>
>> While I hope for this, I doubt that this is a serious option. I 
>> switched from OpenIndiana to OmniOS three years ago as the OI 
>> community was too weak and development nearly stalled at that time. I 
>> am not interested in a new weak OmniOS community for a distribution 
>> that should be used as a production system. The OmniOS community will 
>> be propably too small forever as we already have the Illumos 
>> community project OpenIndiana nearly identical to OmniOS from 
>> distribution, features and use cases. And a very important thing: The 
>> brand OmniOS has already a very bad name as a dead/failed project in 
>> the press mostly affecting Illumos as well.
>>
>>
>> *Plan B*
>> OpenIndiana is a quite established community project for an up to 
>> date Illumos distribution. I would say its nearly identical to OmniOS 
>> beside the missing LX improvements from OmniOS but with an additional 
>> GUI option. I hope to see LX zones upstreamed to Illumos. OpenIndiana 
>> currently offers a rolling development of newest Illumos bits with 
>> snapshots every 6 months but without an additional stable repository 
>> with backported security fixes. Every update give you the newest 
>> Illumos fixes and features but also the newest bugs (ongoing dev, 
>> unstable).
>>
>> If OmniOS has to become a community project, I undoubtly would prefer 
>> a merge of the two distributions up from next releases. OpenIndiana 
>> with a stable repo for every snapshot and with a repo as development 
>> path would give me what was the main advantage of OmniOS beside 
>> commercial support. Access to such a stable repo optionally under an 
>> OmniOS brand may be even a paid (if affordable) option. Such a merge 
>> would strengthen Illumos at first place but also free OpenSource 
>> distributions like OmniOS and OpenIndiana.
>>
>>
>> *Plan C*
>> There is another free Illumos distribution with an enterprise 
>> background suited for datacenter use: SmartOS. It even adds unique 
>> Cloud and virtualisation features like KVM, Solaris zones, Linux 
>> zones and Docker support. As it is running from RAM with everything 
>> important on a datapool it is a very stable/ easy recoverable option 
>> but it lacks some features in the global zone that are required for a 
>> storage server.  An additional plus is the pkgin repo with lots of 
>> supported long term stable services.
>>
>> Using SmartOS would require a mechanism to allow storage services 
>> like SSH, Crossbow, iSCSI, NFS and SMB on the global zone with an 
>> option to save/restore settings from a datapool to be persistent. To 
>> be honest, a SmartOS that is capable to act as a storage appliance 
>> would be my dream option, at least as an additional option. This 
>> would require that SmartOS is not actively hindering this or 
>> preferable is helping to implement a save/restore option for global 
>> zone settings&features.
>>
>>
>> *Discuss*
>> But whatever option is coming, end the Illumos fragmentation for the 
>> sake of one strong free community distribution with a solid number of 
>> contributors and one freely available with a commercial background 
>> like SmartOS/ Samsung owned.
>>
>>
>> Any comments from OmniOS, OI, SmartOS (omnios-discuss, 
>> openindiana-discuss, smartos-discuss) communities?
>> I have send this to all three lists, so optionally answer all lists
>>
>>
>> best regards
>>
>>
>> Gea/ napp-it.org
>>
>>
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