Nexenta - stalled company?

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MiniKnight

Well-Known Member
Mar 30, 2012
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Maybe this should be in commercial NAS systems but this seems like the ZFS forum.

Has anyone noticed that the pace of Nexenta development, community interaction and just general buzz has gone down considerably in maybe the last 6-12 months?
 

awedio

Active Member
Feb 24, 2012
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Something has always "bugged" me about that company....

A lot of chest puffing, yet that can't seem to put out a release on schedule.

How much behind schedule is their 4.0 release?
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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How much behind schedule is their 4.0 release?
That is a great point. I do wonder if that is because of all of their executive turnover recently. I still get the sales e-mails but overall market buzz seems to be stalling with the 4.0 release.

MiniKnight - this is an OK spot. It has turned into ZFS land.
 

awedio

Active Member
Feb 24, 2012
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That is a great point. I do wonder if that is because of all of their executive turnover recently. I still get the sales e-mails but overall market buzz seems to be stalling with the 4.0 release.

MiniKnight - this is an OK spot. It has turned into ZFS land.
They've only had 3 CEO's in the past year !

Every now & then, I stop by to read their forums & just shake my head
 

dswartz

Active Member
Jul 14, 2011
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I would stay away from them, personally. Seems like a lot of turnover, total lack of responsiveness on the forums, can't seem to ship 4.0, etc... Maybe I am being unfair, but I'd rather not take a chance...
 

BThunderW

Active Member
Jul 8, 2013
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Canada, eh?
www.copyerror.com
The biggest unknown is the fact that the activation serial number is generated randomly each time you do a new install. If their web site folds and you need to rebuild your SAN, you're f**ked.
 

dswartz

Active Member
Jul 14, 2011
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Oh, yes, I forgot about *that* little goodie. I remember bitching to Linda when she was still there that the activation system was a piece of crap, because you get an email with an activation code, but there is no way to cut&paste that into a standard console. Fooey....
 

markpower28

Active Member
Apr 9, 2013
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Tarkan Maner was the CEO of Wyse before they sold to Dell. Wyse has a very strong channel with Citrix, Microsoft and VMware. Last month at Citrix Summit Nexenta was the first time sponsor. Next week at VMware PEX it will be a sponsor as well.

That to be said, Tarkan will utilize his relationship with the sector that demand best storage solution at the cheap price. 4.0 should be out in the next 6-12 month with heavy influence from the cloud space...
 

dswartz

Active Member
Jul 14, 2011
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His relationships matter not if they can't ship a product and keep churning experienced employees...
 

Skud

Active Member
Jan 3, 2012
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I think they lost a lot of their community when they moved to a purely "RAW" licensing model. If you want a pool consisting of mirrored vdevs you need to purchase 2x the licenses. Granted, the commercial licenses were always that way, but making that kind of a change for the community edition in the middle of a "dot" release showed poor character in my opinion.

....and they can't seem to put out a new release.

Riley
 

dswartz

Active Member
Jul 14, 2011
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No argument there, but if I were a paying customer, I'd be more worried about a high rate of employee churn, inability to release the new version, etc...
 

noki

New Member
Feb 10, 2014
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If you are not following discussions on (illumos) developer lists or IRC there is not much beyond marketing noise yet coming out of Nexenta. (YMMV)
The core OS developers at Nexenta you see getting fixes upstream are doing a great job, I don't think they are the ones to blame.

The current positive light I saw on the horizon lately was Nexenta finally pushing their source code branch of illumos (underlying OS) out to github.
For comments consider Dec./Jan. issue of illumos watch written by former OpenIndiana project lead Alasdair Lumsden and still quite active chap in the
illumos community: illumos watch – December 2013 & January 2014 - EveryCity | Managed Hosting Services

I saw NexentaCore, illumian and their initial mercurial OpenSolaris patch source going away and how NexentaStor CE got less and less love while EE didn't much advance since 3.1
beyond some stability and security care either. For personal / lab stuff I've moved over to FreeNAS or FreeBSD or OmniOS when there is a need for something Solarish.
For current production use, well I don't know currently what to think of the situation, I'd better not in fact as long as it "just works" for what it is in use.
 

storagequeen

New Member
Feb 14, 2014
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To the contrary, Nexenta is accelerating. There has been an increase in buzz in the press and numerous awards, so there is quite a bit going on. With new management on board, there is a new energy and a renewed focus on our product line. We are in the process of revamping many things, including the Community site. Updates coming shortly. We appreciate your interest in the product and Community site. We always want to hear from our users.
 

dswartz

Active Member
Jul 14, 2011
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No offense, but we've heard it all before. Multiple times. Multiple people who are the flavor of the month for community liaison, and suddenly (without word one), are... gone. Not even on a milk carton. Multiple slippages of V4. No explanations as to why. For a company that 'wants to hear from their users', nexenta has a very strange way of showing it.
 

awedio

Active Member
Feb 24, 2012
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To the contrary, Nexenta is accelerating. There has been an increase in buzz in the press and numerous awards, so there is quite a bit going on. With new management on board, there is a new energy and a renewed focus on our product line. We are in the process of revamping many things, including the Community site. Updates coming shortly. We appreciate your interest in the product and Community site. We always want to hear from our users.
Your 1st post....maybe you should inform us if you work for Nexenta
 

OBasel

Active Member
Dec 28, 2010
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Your 1st post....maybe you should inform us if you work for Nexenta
Seemed clear to me.

I just wonder if Oracle taking Solaris closed screwed Nexenta and they are spending way more time on the hardware compatibility.
 

OBasel

Active Member
Dec 28, 2010
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Well... I would be willing to wager that in sheer numbers of developers Linux and Windows have much more than Illumos. Sure Solaris has a big IB but if I had to allocate dev resources I would probably do Linux, Windows and VMware first, then Solaris, then maybe FreeBSD and then something like Illumos.
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
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Well... I would be willing to wager that in sheer numbers of developers Linux and Windows have much more than Illumos. Sure Solaris has a big IB but if I had to allocate dev resources I would probably do Linux, Windows and VMware first, then Solaris, then maybe FreeBSD and then something like Illumos.
While it is true that you cannot run Solaris/ Illumos on any hardware it is not a problem if you focus on the pro segment. Illumos runs perfect on newer Intel server systems, Intel nics and LSI controllers.

No need to support any hardware in any house - just like Apple: support only the best and major systems is enough and you avoid most of the compatibility problems on Windows or Linux.

This is similar to ESXi or other storage vendors like netapp/Dell/HP with their "support certified hardware only" concept.
 
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