Report: Sun Open Storage
Today I attended a Sun presentation called "Open Storage Systems". I
attended both for my "day-job", that is, an IT consultant, as well as wearing my "Ubuntu Server hat". I'm not able to provide you with a word-for-word, blow-by-blow account of my morning, nor am I wanting to either promote or bag the presentation. The intent of my email to the group is to report on a development that I thought might interact/intersect or be of interest to the team. Some disclaimers up front. I am an IT consultant, that is, I solve weird and wonderful problems for weird and wonderful clients all around the world, but mostly rural and remote Australia. I've been in this industry for over 26 years, so I'm probably a lot cynical about "revolutionary" things. I've never bought any Sun hardware, though a Sparc station did land on my desk some years ago where I coerced it into running Debian at the time. I've never deployed a storage system, never bought one and until recently never needed one. If anything in what I write here is contradicted by what Sun says, perhaps you should ask Sun before relying on what I said. The presentation attracted me because it was touted as an Open Source solution and I was interested to know how Sun was dealing with this and how this might relate to anything I was doing either as a consultant or as a member of the server team. The opening remarks were along the lines of "each CPU in a data centre achieves about 15% utilisation, and each storage solution is closed, proprietary, firmware driven hardware that requires additional licenses and subscriptions to activate new features. Sun has a solution that is open and will save you up to 90% in your storage deployments". At this point I thought, cool, let's see what you got. The release discussed the Sun Storage 7000 series which is basically a Sun box that runs Open Solaris that offers a web-based GUI that allows you to manage this. The drives are spread among SATA/SAS/SSD (and if I recall correctly, SCSI as well). A big deal was made of the time that it takes to get data off a drive and how SSD storage in between the CPU and the drive would handle this by caching the data in smart ways. (This is being handled by ZFS.) The box is built using Intel and/or AMD processors - the talk was sponsored by AMD, but I was unclear if the Intel reference was compatibility, as in an AMD processor that is compatible, or if it was because Intel also contributes hardware - in any case, I don't think it matters that much - but I'm sure that there are some reading this who are cringing at that thoughtless remark - I'm sorry, educate me please :) Much was made of services that can be activated, NFS, CIFS, HTTP, FTP, WebDAV, DNS, NTP, AntiVirus and many others. The box is "certified" for MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft, VMware, blah, blah. (More on that later.) It does iSCSI, block-level stuff, fibre-channel, and other (mumble) protocols. So it's able to do the same as all the other storage systems in the world. There are web pages that describe this and a quick google found this one: http://blogs.sun.com/studler/entry/new_class_of_storage_systems. The web GUI is cute. It shows hardware level information, showing which DIMM is faulty, allowing you to put a blinking light on a drive to get the engineer on-site to swap out a drive, serial numbers, etc. Logging is continuous and data is stored on a system partition. Analysis can be done over this data and information can be exported via CSV. There is cool stuff, you can repartition a system from mirrored to raid 6 in seconds, build a new system in less than 5 minutes from new, comes with lots of expansion options and appears to be well placed when compared to other "Enterprise" stuff. Much of this functionality appears to me be related to ZFS and not the web GUI as such - but I might be wrong. The pitch for this seemed to be that this device can replace a whole lot of infrastructure and because it's open it grows with the developer community - (that's "us Open Source folks"). At this point we got a demo and some point-and-click action. Then the presentation was over and we got to ask questions. My questions related to some of what was said and I opened up with "How do I interface this with other stuff? As in, how do I use my software to talk to your hardware?" The response was not good. Basically, you need to use their web-interface. I asked about web services. Most web-sites these days are not static files, with a web-server on board, how would I deploy a PHP or a PYTHON based web application and how does this relate to the HTTP server on board? The response was that I should run my own web-server hardware and mount the "appliance" across the network using NFS or CIFS. I began to wonder what the purpose of the web-server compatibility and service was. If I used Active Directory or LDAP to authenticate user share access, could I use the same infrastructure to manage the actual shares, that is, could I define and manage my shares in LDAP and have the appliance use that information. "Sure, you'll need to write the software to do that, but sure - actually, the answer wasn't that at all, it was 'uhm, dunno, uhm not in this release.'" If I want to manage the thing using HP OpenView, or anything not Sun, could I do that? "Sure, but you'd need to write your own software to manage that - actually the answer was, no, but I suppose you could write software to do that, it's using Open Solaris and the APIs are published." If I wanted to have a fail over system, could I do that at a block level? "No, not in this release." How is the Oracle and MySQL certification? "Well, you mount the drive and it's certified." So, if I log-in and add a service, what does that do to my service agreement? "It voids your agreement." So, if I cannot talk to anything not Sun and I cannot install anything on the device, how is this Open Source? "Well, you need to know that it's running Open Solaris, so you can build your own system like this and run with that, but you won't get the web GUI and none of the integration." So, coming in the door thinking, wow, Sun has an Open Storage system that might be able to be managed and deployed in a Ubuntu Server environment, I went out the door thinking, Sun has built a system that could be really nice, but instead they've built another proprietary solution that doesn't really talk to anything else and cannot really be managed in anything but a single deployment. So, the 15% CPU utilisation is still the same, you cannot use the Sun based server to run anything because it voids your support contract and it doesn't talk to anything without voiding your contract. Afterwards I had lunch with a guy from LSI where we discussed iSCSI block level devices also made by Sun. I need to deploy a Windows machine to manage it and I need to deploy a front end to talk to users. So, I suppose you could format the hard-drive(s) on this 7000 series hardware and install Ubuntu Server, but that seems to miss the point. (One answer involved installing Windows on the machine :) I'm left with a feeling that I'm unsure how and if we could (or should) evolve Ubuntu Server to integrate with systems like this to make Ubuntu more enterprise ready. It's entirely possible that I've got a distorted picture of I.T. in my head, one where you can manage your storage in a central location, regardless of where the actual drive is, that you can refer to it almost as a cloud and manage the various aspects in an almost transparent fashion, but thus far this does not appear to be the case. I don't know if I did the Sun presentation justice, I'm not a journalist and I have a bias, but I hope that this gives more people information about something I attended. If others have seen presentations that they feel relate to the Ubuntu-Server community, I'd personally love to read other reports which would allow me to "virtually" attend more presentations across more areas. -- Onno Benschop Connected via Optus B3 at S31°54'06" - E115°50'39" (Yokine, WA) -- ()/)/)() ..ASCII for Onno.. |>>? ..EBCDIC for Onno.. --- -. -. --- ..Morse for Onno.. ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 8888 - onno@itmaze.com.au -- ubuntu-server mailing list ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam |
Report: Sun Open Storage
Hi,
Maybe I am still wet behind the ears (only having around 6 years exposure to enterprise IT environments), but I am slightly more excited about this type of technology. For me, I like to be able to choose the kit that various applications run on, and pick the relevant hardware for the job. In the past, we looked at expensive storage systems such as EMC and NetApp arrays, however, was put off these because we have to purchase similar expensive hardware wherever we need to deploy the storage. So, for example, we have a NetApp box at our main site, and have to buy the same models of storage at our backup or remote sites in order to gain such features as replication, even though ordinarily we wouldn't want to buy such an expensive array at the remote locations. With virtualised storage, we would be able to deploy a high grade array for the backend at our main site, but use a less expensive array at the remote or backup site. If the storage is managed by the same applications (such as Sun or Falconstor) at all the sites, then we can do the replication and other fancy stuff that have traditionally been only associated with sticking with one vender's expensive storage arrays throughout, causing vender lockin for the expensive parts of the system. I would be slightly more excited about this if they could talk about virtualising the storage appliance itself, which is what Falconstor have done with the Vmware work. I would be extatic if someone could make a system like this that could run in a regular operating system (eg in a Ubuntu or Windows server), with other applications running in the same session, but previous attempts to do this (eg with SanMelody) have not received good reviews, and I feel the current trend atm is to "vmware" everything, until we will be in an environment where you have 10 or more Vmware "appliances" in the environment, each doing a specific micro task, and all running a Linux kernel, so they can claim open source! Andrew. -----Original Message----- From: Onno Benschop [mailto:onno@itmaze.com.au] Sent: 18 November 2008 08:19 To: Ubuntu Server Team Subject: Report: Sun Open Storage Today I attended a Sun presentation called "Open Storage Systems". I attended both for my "day-job", that is, an IT consultant, as well as wearing my "Ubuntu Server hat". I'm not able to provide you with a word-for-word, blow-by-blow account of my morning, nor am I wanting to either promote or bag the presentation. The intent of my email to the group is to report on a development that I thought might interact/intersect or be of interest to the team. Some disclaimers up front. I am an IT consultant, that is, I solve weird and wonderful problems for weird and wonderful clients all around the world, but mostly rural and remote Australia. I've been in this industry for over 26 years, so I'm probably a lot cynical about "revolutionary" things. I've never bought any Sun hardware, though a Sparc station did land on my desk some years ago where I coerced it into running Debian at the time. I've never deployed a storage system, never bought one and until recently never needed one. If anything in what I write here is contradicted by what Sun says, perhaps you should ask Sun before relying on what I said. The presentation attracted me because it was touted as an Open Source solution and I was interested to know how Sun was dealing with this and how this might relate to anything I was doing either as a consultant or as a member of the server team. The opening remarks were along the lines of "each CPU in a data centre achieves about 15% utilisation, and each storage solution is closed, proprietary, firmware driven hardware that requires additional licenses and subscriptions to activate new features. Sun has a solution that is open and will save you up to 90% in your storage deployments". At this point I thought, cool, let's see what you got. The release discussed the Sun Storage 7000 series which is basically a Sun box that runs Open Solaris that offers a web-based GUI that allows you to manage this. The drives are spread among SATA/SAS/SSD (and if I recall correctly, SCSI as well). A big deal was made of the time that it takes to get data off a drive and how SSD storage in between the CPU and the drive would handle this by caching the data in smart ways. (This is being handled by ZFS.) The box is built using Intel and/or AMD processors - the talk was sponsored by AMD, but I was unclear if the Intel reference was compatibility, as in an AMD processor that is compatible, or if it was because Intel also contributes hardware - in any case, I don't think it matters that much - but I'm sure that there are some reading this who are cringing at that thoughtless remark - I'm sorry, educate me please :) Much was made of services that can be activated, NFS, CIFS, HTTP, FTP, WebDAV, DNS, NTP, AntiVirus and many others. The box is "certified" for MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft, VMware, blah, blah. (More on that later.) It does iSCSI, block-level stuff, fibre-channel, and other (mumble) protocols. So it's able to do the same as all the other storage systems in the world. There are web pages that describe this and a quick google found this one: http://blogs.sun.com/studler/entry/new_class_of_storage_systems. The web GUI is cute. It shows hardware level information, showing which DIMM is faulty, allowing you to put a blinking light on a drive to get the engineer on-site to swap out a drive, serial numbers, etc. Logging is continuous and data is stored on a system partition. Analysis can be done over this data and information can be exported via CSV. There is cool stuff, you can repartition a system from mirrored to raid 6 in seconds, build a new system in less than 5 minutes from new, comes with lots of expansion options and appears to be well placed when compared to other "Enterprise" stuff. Much of this functionality appears to me be related to ZFS and not the web GUI as such - but I might be wrong. The pitch for this seemed to be that this device can replace a whole lot of infrastructure and because it's open it grows with the developer community - (that's "us Open Source folks"). At this point we got a demo and some point-and-click action. Then the presentation was over and we got to ask questions. My questions related to some of what was said and I opened up with "How do I interface this with other stuff? As in, how do I use my software to talk to your hardware?" The response was not good. Basically, you need to use their web-interface. I asked about web services. Most web-sites these days are not static files, with a web-server on board, how would I deploy a PHP or a PYTHON based web application and how does this relate to the HTTP server on board? The response was that I should run my own web-server hardware and mount the "appliance" across the network using NFS or CIFS. I began to wonder what the purpose of the web-server compatibility and service was. If I used Active Directory or LDAP to authenticate user share access, could I use the same infrastructure to manage the actual shares, that is, could I define and manage my shares in LDAP and have the appliance use that information. "Sure, you'll need to write the software to do that, but sure - actually, the answer wasn't that at all, it was 'uhm, dunno, uhm not in this release.'" If I want to manage the thing using HP OpenView, or anything not Sun, could I do that? "Sure, but you'd need to write your own software to manage that - actually the answer was, no, but I suppose you could write software to do that, it's using Open Solaris and the APIs are published." If I wanted to have a fail over system, could I do that at a block level? "No, not in this release." How is the Oracle and MySQL certification? "Well, you mount the drive and it's certified." So, if I log-in and add a service, what does that do to my service agreement? "It voids your agreement." So, if I cannot talk to anything not Sun and I cannot install anything on the device, how is this Open Source? "Well, you need to know that it's running Open Solaris, so you can build your own system like this and run with that, but you won't get the web GUI and none of the integration." So, coming in the door thinking, wow, Sun has an Open Storage system that might be able to be managed and deployed in a Ubuntu Server environment, I went out the door thinking, Sun has built a system that could be really nice, but instead they've built another proprietary solution that doesn't really talk to anything else and cannot really be managed in anything but a single deployment. So, the 15% CPU utilisation is still the same, you cannot use the Sun based server to run anything because it voids your support contract and it doesn't talk to anything without voiding your contract. Afterwards I had lunch with a guy from LSI where we discussed iSCSI block level devices also made by Sun. I need to deploy a Windows machine to manage it and I need to deploy a front end to talk to users. So, I suppose you could format the hard-drive(s) on this 7000 series hardware and install Ubuntu Server, but that seems to miss the point. (One answer involved installing Windows on the machine :) I'm left with a feeling that I'm unsure how and if we could (or should) evolve Ubuntu Server to integrate with systems like this to make Ubuntu more enterprise ready. It's entirely possible that I've got a distorted picture of I.T. in my head, one where you can manage your storage in a central location, regardless of where the actual drive is, that you can refer to it almost as a cloud and manage the various aspects in an almost transparent fashion, but thus far this does not appear to be the case. I don't know if I did the Sun presentation justice, I'm not a journalist and I have a bias, but I hope that this gives more people information about something I attended. If others have seen presentations that they feel relate to the Ubuntu-Server community, I'd personally love to read other reports which would allow me to "virtually" attend more presentations across more areas. -- Onno Benschop Connected via Optus B3 at S31°54'06" - E115°50'39" (Yokine, WA) -- ()/)/)() ..ASCII for Onno.. |>>? ..EBCDIC for Onno.. --- -. -. --- ..Morse for Onno.. ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 8888 - onno@itmaze.com.au -- ubuntu-server mailing list ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam -- allpay.net Limited, Fortis et Fides, Whitestone Business Park, Whitestone, Hereford, HR1 3SE. Registered in England No. 02933191. UK VAT Reg. No. 666 9148 88. Telephone: 0870 243 3434, Fax: 0870 243 6041. 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Report: Sun Open Storage
On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 10:18 AM, Onno Benschop <onno@itmaze.com.au> wrote:
> Today I attended a Sun presentation called "Open Storage Systems". I > attended both for my "day-job", that is, an IT consultant, as well as > wearing my "Ubuntu Server hat". I'm not able to provide you with a > word-for-word, blow-by-blow account of my morning, nor am I wanting to > either promote or bag the presentation. The intent of my email to the > group is to report on a development that I thought might > interact/intersect or be of interest to the team. > > Some disclaimers up front. I am an IT consultant, that is, I solve weird > and wonderful problems for weird and wonderful clients all around the > world, but mostly rural and remote Australia. I've been in this industry > for over 26 years, so I'm probably a lot cynical about "revolutionary" > things. I've never bought any Sun hardware, though a Sparc station did > land on my desk some years ago where I coerced it into running Debian at > the time. I've never deployed a storage system, never bought one and > until recently never needed one. If anything in what I write here is > contradicted by what Sun says, perhaps you should ask Sun before relying > on what I said. > > The presentation attracted me because it was touted as an Open Source > solution and I was interested to know how Sun was dealing with this and > how this might relate to anything I was doing either as a consultant or > as a member of the server team. > > The opening remarks were along the lines of "each CPU in a data centre > achieves about 15% utilisation, and each storage solution is closed, > proprietary, firmware driven hardware that requires additional licenses > and subscriptions to activate new features. Sun has a solution that is > open and will save you up to 90% in your storage deployments". > > At this point I thought, cool, let's see what you got. > > The release discussed the Sun Storage 7000 series which is basically a > Sun box that runs Open Solaris that offers a web-based GUI that allows > you to manage this. The drives are spread among SATA/SAS/SSD (and if I > recall correctly, SCSI as well). A big deal was made of the time that it > takes to get data off a drive and how SSD storage in between the CPU and > the drive would handle this by caching the data in smart ways. (This is > being handled by ZFS.) > > The box is built using Intel and/or AMD processors - the talk was > sponsored by AMD, but I was unclear if the Intel reference was > compatibility, as in an AMD processor that is compatible, or if it was > because Intel also contributes hardware - in any case, I don't think it > matters that much - but I'm sure that there are some reading this who > are cringing at that thoughtless remark - I'm sorry, educate me please :) > > Much was made of services that can be activated, NFS, CIFS, HTTP, FTP, > WebDAV, DNS, NTP, AntiVirus and many others. > > The box is "certified" for MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft, VMware, blah, blah. > (More on that later.) It does iSCSI, block-level stuff, fibre-channel, > and other (mumble) protocols. So it's able to do the same as all the > other storage systems in the world. There are web pages that describe > this and a quick google found this one: > http://blogs.sun.com/studler/entry/new_class_of_storage_systems. > > The web GUI is cute. It shows hardware level information, showing which > DIMM is faulty, allowing you to put a blinking light on a drive to get > the engineer on-site to swap out a drive, serial numbers, etc. Logging > is continuous and data is stored on a system partition. Analysis can be > done over this data and information can be exported via CSV. There is > cool stuff, you can repartition a system from mirrored to raid 6 in > seconds, build a new system in less than 5 minutes from new, comes with > lots of expansion options and appears to be well placed when compared to > other "Enterprise" stuff. Much of this functionality appears to me be > related to ZFS and not the web GUI as such - but I might be wrong. > > The pitch for this seemed to be that this device can replace a whole lot > of infrastructure and because it's open it grows with the developer > community - (that's "us Open Source folks"). > > At this point we got a demo and some point-and-click action. > > Then the presentation was over and we got to ask questions. > > My questions related to some of what was said and I opened up with "How > do I interface this with other stuff? As in, how do I use my software to > talk to your hardware?" The response was not good. Basically, you need > to use their web-interface. > > I asked about web services. Most web-sites these days are not static > files, with a web-server on board, how would I deploy a PHP or a PYTHON > based web application and how does this relate to the HTTP server on > board? The response was that I should run my own web-server hardware and > mount the "appliance" across the network using NFS or CIFS. I began to > wonder what the purpose of the web-server compatibility and service was. > > If I used Active Directory or LDAP to authenticate user share access, > could I use the same infrastructure to manage the actual shares, that > is, could I define and manage my shares in LDAP and have the appliance > use that information. "Sure, you'll need to write the software to do > that, but sure - actually, the answer wasn't that at all, it was 'uhm, > dunno, uhm not in this release.'" > > If I want to manage the thing using HP OpenView, or anything not Sun, > could I do that? "Sure, but you'd need to write your own software to > manage that - actually the answer was, no, but I suppose you could write > software to do that, it's using Open Solaris and the APIs are published." > > If I wanted to have a fail over system, could I do that at a block > level? "No, not in this release." > > How is the Oracle and MySQL certification? "Well, you mount the drive > and it's certified." > > So, if I log-in and add a service, what does that do to my service > agreement? "It voids your agreement." > > So, if I cannot talk to anything not Sun and I cannot install anything > on the device, how is this Open Source? "Well, you need to know that > it's running Open Solaris, so you can build your own system like this > and run with that, but you won't get the web GUI and none of the > integration." > > So, coming in the door thinking, wow, Sun has an Open Storage system > that might be able to be managed and deployed in a Ubuntu Server > environment, I went out the door thinking, Sun has built a system that > could be really nice, but instead they've built another proprietary > solution that doesn't really talk to anything else and cannot really be > managed in anything but a single deployment. > > So, the 15% CPU utilisation is still the same, you cannot use the Sun > based server to run anything because it voids your support contract and > it doesn't talk to anything without voiding your contract. > > Afterwards I had lunch with a guy from LSI where we discussed iSCSI > block level devices also made by Sun. I need to deploy a Windows machine > to manage it and I need to deploy a front end to talk to users. > > So, I suppose you could format the hard-drive(s) on this 7000 series > hardware and install Ubuntu Server, but that seems to miss the point. > (One answer involved installing Windows on the machine :) > > I'm left with a feeling that I'm unsure how and if we could (or should) > evolve Ubuntu Server to integrate with systems like this to make Ubuntu > more enterprise ready. > > It's entirely possible that I've got a distorted picture of I.T. in my > head, one where you can manage your storage in a central location, > regardless of where the actual drive is, that you can refer to it almost > as a cloud and manage the various aspects in an almost transparent > fashion, but thus far this does not appear to be the case. > > I don't know if I did the Sun presentation justice, I'm not a journalist > and I have a bias, but I hope that this gives more people information > about something I attended. If others have seen presentations that they > feel relate to the Ubuntu-Server community, I'd personally love to read > other reports which would allow me to "virtually" attend more > presentations across more areas. > > -- > Onno Benschop > > Connected via Optus B3 at S31°54'06" - E115°50'39" (Yokine, WA) > -- > ()/)/)() ..ASCII for Onno.. > |>>? ..EBCDIC for Onno.. > --- -. -. --- ..Morse for Onno.. > > ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 8888 - onno@itmaze.com.au > > > > -- Thank you for sharing this with us. It's sure inspirational, but getting to the dissapointments you shared further down the line, I think to myself. Isn't easier to just build your own storage applience? I mean, there are so many open source project which allow you to setup a NFS / SAMBA / SAN / etc server within a few minutes from the CD, onto any hardware. How more difficult will it be to use SSD (which is still very expensive) to run & manage the OS on the device, and then also have all the capabilities of this Sun device? -- Kind Regards Rudi Ahlers -- ubuntu-server mailing list ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam |
Report: Sun Open Storage
Thank you for sharing this with us. It's sure inspirational, but
getting to the dissapointments you shared further down the line, I think to myself. Isn't easier to just build your own storage applience? I mean, there are so many open source project which allow you to setup a NFS / SAMBA / SAN / etc server within a few minutes from the CD, onto any hardware. How more difficult will it be to use SSD (which is still very expensive) to run & manage the OS on the device, and then also have all the capabilities of this Sun device? Unfortunately a lot of the neat functionality is related to ZFS.* SSD also has a hidden pitfall--it tends to be quite bad at random writes (there is work being done to improve this, see newest Intel SSD's).* This is why Sun utilizes them in between CPU and disk array on the 7000.* By using it as a caching device, writes are contigous and written in large contigous blocks, thus sidestepping the issue of random write speed. The ZFS funcationality aside, there are a lot open source projects that provide similar functionality, even the web gui.* Ubuntu server, I think, is on its way to there, lacking mostly the management gui, which is in the works for a later release. -- ubuntu-server mailing list ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam |
Report: Sun Open Storage
Why doesn't this surprise me? When Sun Microsystems started on their
"open source" escapade, I was excited. A proprietary company turning over a new leaf. However, over the past few years, all I've seen is proprietary solutions using open source products, such as what you've described here. Rather disappointing, but not surprising in any manner. Thanks for the report. -- ,-O Aaron Toponce O } Ubuntu Member `-O http://www.ubuntu.com -- ubuntu-server mailing list ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam |
Report: Sun Open Storage
Hi Onno, and all. See my reaction inline...
On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 17:18 +0900, Onno Benschop wrote: > Some disclaimers up front. I am an IT consultant, that is, I solve weird > and wonderful problems for weird and wonderful clients all around the > world, but mostly rural and remote Australia. I've been in this industry > for over 26 years, so I'm probably a lot cynical about "revolutionary" > things. I've never bought any Sun hardware, though a Sparc station did > land on my desk some years ago where I coerced it into running Debian at > the time. I've never deployed a storage system, never bought one and > until recently never needed one. If anything in what I write here is > contradicted by what Sun says, perhaps you should ask Sun before relying > on what I said. As a Sun partner, I've heard about this program some time ago. And I must say I can't really agree with the negative feel you give this box. I think, in general, you looked at it the wrong way. Let me get a bit clearer on this. > My questions related to some of what was said and I opened up with "How > do I interface this with other stuff? As in, how do I use my software to > talk to your hardware?" The response was not good. Basically, you need > to use their web-interface. There's also a cli, I've been told. > I asked about web services. Most web-sites these days are not static > files, with a web-server on board, how would I deploy a PHP or a PYTHON > based web application and how does this relate to the HTTP server on > board? The response was that I should run my own web-server hardware and > mount the "appliance" across the network using NFS or CIFS. I began to > wonder what the purpose of the web-server compatibility and service was. Imagine a Netapp filer. That runs a httpd. Would you deploy websites on it? Ofcourse not, it's a filer, not a webserver. > If I used Active Directory or LDAP to authenticate user share access, > could I use the same infrastructure to manage the actual shares, that > is, could I define and manage my shares in LDAP and have the appliance > use that information. "Sure, you'll need to write the software to do > that, but sure - actually, the answer wasn't that at all, it was 'uhm, > dunno, uhm not in this release.'" > > If I want to manage the thing using HP OpenView, or anything not Sun, > could I do that? "Sure, but you'd need to write your own software to > manage that - actually the answer was, no, but I suppose you could write > software to do that, it's using Open Solaris and the APIs are published." This is a bit odd. If you want support from HP OpenView, ask them to write support (a driver) for it. You can't expect anyone to get this kind of support. It's a filer, not a domain controller. > If I wanted to have a fail over system, could I do that at a block > level? "No, not in this release." That's something that would be really nice. They (Sun) are working on getting feedback from partners to add functionality to next releases. > How is the Oracle and MySQL certification? "Well, you mount the drive > and it's certified." Certification means nothing. It just means that Oracle and Mysql(duh) find the appliance stable enough to deploy database data on it. > So, if I log-in and add a service, what does that do to my service > agreement? "It voids your agreement." Ofcourse it does. Back to the Netapp; if you hack your way into that, your warranty voids. > So, coming in the door thinking, wow, Sun has an Open Storage system > that might be able to be managed and deployed in a Ubuntu Server > environment, I went out the door thinking, Sun has built a system that > could be really nice, but instead they've built another proprietary > solution that doesn't really talk to anything else and cannot really be > managed in anything but a single deployment. It's not really proprietary. It's OpenSolaris. Download and deploy it, be my guest. It's hell. :) They've created an appliance for which they've used Open Source software, and added some proprietary stuff to make life more easier. Compare it to Ubuntu (Open source) and Landscape (closed source). Ubuntu rules, landscape would be nice to have, but is closed source. (Even worse, you cannot get the serverpart so you would depend op Canonical for it). I think you looked at this box the wrong way, rethink and compare it to Netapp's and EMC's.. -- Mark Schouten <mark@prevented.net> -- ubuntu-server mailing list ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam |
Report: Sun Open Storage
On 19/11/08 03:59, Mark Schouten wrote:
> >> So, coming in the door thinking, wow, Sun has an Open Storage system >> that might be able to be managed and deployed in a Ubuntu Server >> environment, I went out the door thinking, Sun has built a system that >> could be really nice, but instead they've built another proprietary >> solution that doesn't really talk to anything else and cannot really be >> managed in anything but a single deployment. >> > > It's not really proprietary. It's OpenSolaris. Download and deploy it, > be my guest. It's hell. :) They've created an appliance for which > they've used Open Source software, and added some proprietary stuff to > make life more easier. > Compare it to Ubuntu (Open source) and Landscape (closed source). Ubuntu > rules, landscape would be nice to have, but is closed source. (Even > worse, you cannot get the serverpart so you would depend op Canonical > for it). > > I think you looked at this box the wrong way, rethink and compare it to > Netapp's and EMC's.. > Your concluding sentence is where I ended up, but I came into the room with no pre-conceived ideas on the matter. Sun told me that 15% of CPU in a data centre was running idle and told me that all other storage vendors were charging gobs of money to enable features and that Sun would save me 90% on my storage while giving me better hardware utilisation and a better power foot-print because it used commodity hardware and open source software - when features were enabled, they would just be added at no extra cost. They then went on to deliver a proprietary solution that they, and now you, tell me I should compare with a Netapp or EMC solution. I'm not saying that their solution is crap, I'm saying that they're telling me one thing and offering me another. They're telling me the machine is a real server, "it's running Open Solaris was the mantra", but when I actually want to use it as a server (which personally I think would be an excellent idea - and I'm interested to hear comment on this), I void my support contract which makes no sense to me at all. Ironically, the VMware issue came up and I suggested to the Sun engineer in front of me at the time that if they actually had real VMware certification, why didn't they offer to run appliances on the machine, and amend the support contract to include something like this: "If your problem is caused by your running VMware appliance, Sun support will be unable to assist you, however, if when the appliance is stopped and the issue persists, you'll receive full Sun support." - but I suspect that it will be some time before we see something like that :-) Which reminds me, there was no discussion about what happens to their system during upgrade. There is a roll-back for upgrades, but there was no discussion about what happens during the upgrade and no reference to interoperability between clustered solutions either (other than to say that interoperability was extremely closely tied to firmware versions and OS versions), so there is no information on if two or more clustered devices can run together with different versions, so you can reboot one after an upgrade without turning off the cluster - I suspect "that's in a future release". A final Ubuntu-server thought, the roll-back idea seemed like a really cool thing that we could implement with a snap-shot. That is, do a system-snap-shot before any upgrades leaving the ability to roll-back a system if the upgrade had issues - of course little things like incoming mail and database queries might be a problem, but if we deal with that by separating the OS from the data (hmm, where did I hear that before :), then we might have ourselves a feature that I know I'd use. Nothing like doing an upgrade at midnight, having it fail and spending the next 8 hours fixing it :) -- Onno Benschop Connected via Optus B3 at S31°54'06" - E115°50'39" (Yokine, WA) -- ()/)/)() ..ASCII for Onno.. |>>? ..EBCDIC for Onno.. --- -. -. --- ..Morse for Onno.. ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 8888 - onno@itmaze.com.au -- ubuntu-server mailing list ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam |
Report: Sun Open Storage
I still think you're missing the point.* The problem was not what Sun said or is trying to sell you but with your pre-conception of what they were selling you.* While it is technically a "server" it is really a storage appliance that just happens to be based on Open Solaris and ZFS.* So the technology which it is based on is open source although I'm not sure it really matters here since if the storage vendor goes under there are still proprietary pieces to this and support would also go away.* So I'm not sure how this reduces the risk involved with "Vendor Lockin" since you're still locked to Sun to some degree.* But just like any other enterprise class SAN or NAS solution the only job that this appliance has is to store, manage, and serve block and file level access to the storage it hosts.* If you want an application to use the storage then like with any other storage system you will need a server that utilizes the storage on that server.* iSCSI would probably make the most sense here for servers where file access is better if you want to use the storage unit as a file server to clients directly.
I wasn't there so I don't know what context Sun was meaning when they stated that the typical cpu utilization in a datacenter was only 15%.* To me that is a different problem which virtualization attempts to solve by giving you better utilization and flexibility in your computing resources.* The benifits here with the Sun Storage offerings are the same as any other enterprise storage solution.* Similar to virtualization they let you consolidate your storage and get better utilization of your storage capacity as well as give you central monitoring and management.* Any SAN type solution is capable of doing that but the price point and features are ultimately what matters.* I think what Sun is offering here is a good value if it has the features you require. * -- David On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 4:27 PM, Onno Benschop <onno@itmaze.com.au> wrote: On 19/11/08 03:59, Mark Schouten wrote: > >> So, coming in the door thinking, wow, Sun has an Open Storage system >> that might be able to be managed and deployed in a Ubuntu Server >> environment, I went out the door thinking, Sun has built a system that >> could be really nice, but instead they've built another proprietary >> solution that doesn't really talk to anything else and cannot really be >> managed in anything but a single deployment. >> > > It's not really proprietary. It's OpenSolaris. Download and deploy it, > be my guest. It's hell. :) They've created an appliance for which > they've used Open Source software, and added some proprietary stuff to > make life more easier. > Compare it to Ubuntu (Open source) and Landscape (closed source). Ubuntu > rules, landscape would be nice to have, but is closed source. (Even > worse, you cannot get the serverpart so you would depend op Canonical > for it). > > I think you looked at this box the wrong way, rethink and compare it to > Netapp's and EMC's.. > Your concluding sentence is where I ended up, but I came into the room with no pre-conceived ideas on the matter. Sun told me that 15% of CPU in a data centre was running idle and told me that all other storage vendors were charging gobs of money to enable features and that Sun would save me 90% on my storage while giving me better hardware utilisation and a better power foot-print because it used commodity hardware and open source software - when features were enabled, they would just be added at no extra cost. They then went on to deliver a proprietary solution that they, and now you, tell me I should compare with a Netapp or EMC solution. I'm not saying that their solution is crap, I'm saying that they're telling me one thing and offering me another. They're telling me the machine is a real server, "it's running Open Solaris was the mantra", but when I actually want to use it as a server (which personally I think would be an excellent idea - and I'm interested to hear comment on this), I void my support contract which makes no sense to me at all. Ironically, the VMware issue came up and I suggested to the Sun engineer in front of me at the time that if they actually had real VMware certification, why didn't they offer to run appliances on the machine, and amend the support contract to include something like this: "If your problem is caused by your running VMware appliance, Sun support will be unable to assist you, however, if when the appliance is stopped and the issue persists, you'll receive full Sun support." - but I suspect that it will be some time before we see something like that :-) Which reminds me, there was no discussion about what happens to their system during upgrade. There is a roll-back for upgrades, but there was no discussion about what happens during the upgrade and no reference to interoperability between clustered solutions either (other than to say that interoperability was extremely closely tied to firmware versions and OS versions), so there is no information on if two or more clustered devices can run together with different versions, so you can reboot one after an upgrade without turning off the cluster - I suspect "that's in a future release". A final Ubuntu-server thought, the roll-back idea seemed like a really cool thing that we could implement with a snap-shot. That is, do a system-snap-shot before any upgrades leaving the ability to roll-back a system if the upgrade had issues - of course little things like incoming mail and database queries might be a problem, but if we deal with that by separating the OS from the data (hmm, where did I hear that before :), then we might have ourselves a feature that I know I'd use. Nothing like doing an upgrade at midnight, having it fail and spending the next 8 hours fixing it :) -- Onno Benschop Connected via Optus B3 at S31°54'06" - E115°50'39" (Yokine, WA) -- ()/)/)() * * * *..ASCII for Onno.. |>>? * * * * * *..EBCDIC for Onno.. --- -. -. --- * ..Morse for Onno.. ITmaze * - * ABN: 56 178 057 063 * - *ph: 04 1219 8888 * - * onno@itmaze.com.au -- ubuntu-server mailing list ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam -- ubuntu-server mailing list ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam |
Report: Sun Open Storage
On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 07:45 -0700, Aaron Toponce wrote:
> Why doesn't this surprise me? When Sun Microsystems started on their > "open source" escapade, I was excited. A proprietary company turning > over a new leaf. However, over the past few years, all I've seen is Sun has always done *lots* of open standards stuff. > proprietary solutions using open source products, such as what you've > described here. Rather disappointing, but not surprising in any manner. It is a bit disapointing how limited the openness is. > Thanks for the report. That said, Sun is actively trying to free the RPC code in a number of projects (see the debian-devel list atm), so they are not *all* bad :) kk -- Karl Goetz <karl@kgoetz.id.au> -- ubuntu-server mailing list ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam |
Report: Sun Open Storage
On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 19:59 +0100, Mark Schouten wrote:
> Hi Onno, and all. See my reaction inline... > > > On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 17:18 +0900, Onno Benschop wrote: > If anything in what I write here is > > contradicted by what Sun says, perhaps you should ask Sun before relying > > on what I said. > > As a Sun partner, I've heard about this program some time ago. And I > must say I can't really agree with the negative feel you give this box. > I think, in general, you looked at it the wrong way. Let me get a bit > clearer on this. Good to have more perspectives. > > > My questions related to some of what was said and I opened up with "How > > do I interface this with other stuff? As in, how do I use my software to > > talk to your hardware?" The response was not good. Basically, you need > > to use their web-interface. > > There's also a cli, I've been told. I've dealt with equipment before with a web UI which did stuff, then a CLI which was a few 'reset password' level of commands. Not saying the Sun box is like that, just that "it has a cli" doesnt mean its useful :) > > > If I wanted to have a fail over system, could I do that at a block > > level? "No, not in this release." > > That's something that would be really nice. They (Sun) are working on > getting feedback from partners to add functionality to next releases. Does this mean your passing on the request? ;) > > So, coming in the door thinking, wow, Sun has an Open Storage system > > that might be able to be managed and deployed in a Ubuntu Server > > environment, I went out the door thinking, Sun has built a system that > > could be really nice, but instead they've built another proprietary > > solution that doesn't really talk to anything else and cannot really be > > managed in anything but a single deployment. > > It's not really proprietary. It's OpenSolaris. Download and deploy it, > be my guest. It's hell. :) They've created an appliance for which > they've used Open Source software, and added some proprietary stuff to > make life more easier. If you go with the FSF concept of 'proprietary', then even though the source is available its still proprietary. That's because you cant properly exercise the 4 freedoms. If you go with the 'no source is proprietary' view, then by and large, its not a proprietary system. > Compare it to Ubuntu (Open source) and Landscape (closed source). Ubuntu > rules, landscape would be nice to have, but is closed source. (Even > worse, you cannot get the serverpart so you would depend op Canonical > for it). Just because Canonical produces proprietary support software doesn't justify other companies doing it (or making it an ok thing to do). kk > > I think you looked at this box the wrong way, rethink and compare it to > Netapp's and EMC's.. > > -- > Mark Schouten <mark@prevented.net> > > -- Karl Goetz <karl@kgoetz.id.au> -- ubuntu-server mailing list ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam |
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