napp-it and OmniOS ESXi ZFS Appliance - It works!

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

chune

Member
Oct 28, 2013
119
23
18
I got really excited for this release and deployed it on a bunch of (dev) servers after reading that omni was the preferred distro for napp-it going forward. However once i dug into them i found they were stripped of all the handy tools found in the OI distros. Namely: nano, rsync, and iperf.

Adding sources, searching for packages and updating PATH variables to persist reboots is a real pain to learn and i still haven't found a repo that has iperf. Would be nice if gea did an update to this with all the nice packages we are used to as well as a smaller VHD size for all of us running on minimal sized boot drives (ie RAID1 32gb msata SSDs).
 

bmacklin

Member
Dec 10, 2013
96
5
8
Last night I downloaded the ESXi ZFS appliance with OmniOS + napp-it and installed it on the Supermicro A1ASi-2750F ESXi 5.5 host. For a bit on the original post
Will do a quick picture driven guide soon for the main site.
Cool! Can't wait to check it out. I'm still trying to fit napp-it and ESXi all on one USB drive that boots directly into ESXi. So far I can get into ESXi but I can't figure out how to make ESXi see the free space on the usb drive. Do you think it is possible?
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
3,140
1,182
113
DE
I have updated my free preconfigured ESXi webbased-ZFS storage-appliance VM (napp-in-one) v. 13b to OmniOS 1008 stable

- and added a second one (14a) for testings that includes all services and add-ons like netatalk 3.1, proftpd, Apache with MySQL, MySQLAdmin, Owncloud, tftpd, rsync 3.1 or the Mediatomb DLNA server

- both together with a napp-it 0.9e1 preview that introduces ftp, iSCSI and www (virtuel server) as a ZFS filesystem property

changelog
napp-it // webbased ZFS NAS/SAN appliance for OmniOS, OpenIndiana and Solaris downloads

download
napp-it // webbased ZFS NAS/SAN appliance for OmniOS, OpenIndiana and Solaris downloads
 
  • Like
Reactions: F1ydave

chune

Member
Oct 28, 2013
119
23
18
I have updated my free preconfigured ESXi webbased-ZFS storage-appliance VM (napp-in-one) v. 13b to OmniOS 1008 stable

- and added a second one (14a) for testings that includes all services and add-ons like netatalk 3.1, proftpd, Apache with MySQL, MySQLAdmin, Owncloud, tftpd, rsync 3.1 or the Mediatomb DLNA server

- both together with a napp-it 0.9e1 preview that introduces ftp, iSCSI and www (virtuel server) as a ZFS filesystem property

changelog
napp-it // webbased ZFS NAS/SAN appliance for OmniOS, OpenIndiana and Solaris downloads

download
napp-it // webbased ZFS NAS/SAN appliance for OmniOS, OpenIndiana and Solaris downloads
yayy gea! Thank you for all your hard work on this! Just out of curiosity, do either of these versions come with CLI tools like iperf, rsync, or nano preinstalled? It was frustrating for me as a solaris noob to figure out how to add correct repos, install packages and updating my path directory to persist across reboots. And i still haven't figured out how to install iperf on omni. Anyways, look forward to checking this out on my new c2100 build! Couldn't have came at a better time!
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
3,140
1,182
113
DE
yayy gea! Thank you for all your hard work on this! Just out of curiosity, do either of these versions come with CLI tools like iperf, rsync, or nano preinstalled? It was frustrating for me as a solaris noob to figure out how to add correct repos, install packages and updating my path directory to persist across reboots. And i still haven't figured out how to install iperf on omni. Anyways, look forward to checking this out on my new c2100 build! Couldn't have came at a better time!
Iperf and rsync (newest 3.1) are included in napp-it, see /var/web-gui/data/tools/
nano can be installed either from one of the OmniOS repos or from Index of /packages/illumos/2013Q1/editors/
but its easier to use either midnight commander (mc) locally or (I prefer this way) use WinSCP remotely from Windows.

see napp-it // webbased ZFS NAS/SAN appliance for OmniOS, OpenIndiana and Solaris downloads
 
Last edited:

StephD

Member
Dec 17, 2013
126
0
16
Last night I downloaded the ESXi ZFS appliance with OmniOS + napp-it and installed it on the Supermicro A1ASi-2750F ESXi 5.5 host.

Success! Here is the image working on the Avoton platform:

Will do a quick picture driven guide soon for the main site.
I'm confused. I thought c2750 didn't support vt-d so it was impossible to use a ZFS virtual appliance for storage purpose in an AIO project because it couldn't access the hardware. Am I missing something ?
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
I'm confused. I thought c2750 didn't support vt-d so it was impossible to use a ZFS virtual appliance for storage purpose in an AIO project because it couldn't access the hardware. Am I missing something ?
IIRC that post was just to confirm it was working and I was logged into the C2750 at the time. The main reason you want VT-d is so that you can pass-through the storage controller to the VM to remove another layer (ESXi) from getting in the middle of OS to controller/ drive communication.
 

chune

Member
Oct 28, 2013
119
23
18
Iperf and rsync (newest 3.1) are included in napp-it, see /var/web-gui/data/tools/
nano can be installed either from one of the OmniOS repos or from Index of /packages/illumos/2013Q1/editors/
but its easier to use either midnight commander (mc) locally or (I prefer this way) use WinSCP remotely from Windows.

see napp-it // webbased ZFS NAS/SAN appliance for OmniOS, OpenIndiana and Solaris downloads
aha! Thank you for the link, that is exactly what i have been searching for! And to think it has been right on your site this whole time!

One last thing, is there any way you can release a VM with a smaller vmdk? I only have 22gb to work with on most my servers for the raid 1 boot mirror (use small mirrored mSATA SSDs for esxi install + napp-it datastore), so i have been doing the omni install myself and attempting to copy over all of your changes to the smaller VM i then deploy on these servers, but i am sure i am missing some items! I even tried to use clonezilla to clone to a smaller volume and that did not work :( Is there any way you could make a 15gb vmdk?
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
3,140
1,182
113
DE
aha! Thank you for the link, that is exactly what i have been searching for! And to think it has been right on your site this whole time!

One last thing, is there any way you can release a VM with a smaller vmdk? I only have 22gb to work with on most my servers for the raid 1 boot mirror (use small mirrored mSATA SSDs for esxi install + napp-it datastore), so i have been doing the omni install myself and attempting to copy over all of your changes to the smaller VM i then deploy on these servers, but i am sure i am missing some items! I even tried to use clonezilla to clone to a smaller volume and that did not work :( Is there any way you could make a 15gb vmdk?
Its quite easy do do yourself
- create a new VM (Solaris 64bit, with a bootdisk 15 GB)
- install OmniOS (connect CD to boot-iso)
- setup OmniOS as described in napp-it // webbased ZFS NAS/SAN appliance for OmniOS, OpenIndiana and Solaris downloads (I have updated that page about the needed steps for vmware tools)

its no more than:
- setup network manually
- install napp-it per wget
- install vmware tools (see item 10.)
 
Last edited:

chune

Member
Oct 28, 2013
119
23
18
Its quite easy do do yourself
- create a new VM (Solaris 64bit, with a bootdisk 15 GB)
- install OmniOS (connect CD to boot-iso)
- setup OmniOS as described in napp-it // webbased ZFS NAS/SAN appliance for OmniOS, OpenIndiana and Solaris downloads (I have updated that page about the needed steps for vmware tools)

its no more than:
- setup network manually
- install napp-it per wget
- install vmware tools (see item 10.)
Thats pretty much what i have been doing with the addition of the LSO fix for the e1000 driver. However, i thought there was more "under the hood" type things you have been tweaking such as software sources and path variables. I guess i know how to do that now anyways! I can make my smaller VM available for download if there is any interest in it, just let me know.
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
3,140
1,182
113
DE
However, i thought there was more "under the hood" type things you have been tweaking such as software sources and path variables. I guess i know how to do that now anyways! I can make my smaller VM available for download if there is any interest in it, just let me know.
The setup is done by the napp-it installer

ps
15 GB is quite small. Whenever you setup additional tools or do system updates your pool is nearly full and you must delete bootable system snaps. I would use some some more space whenever possible.
 

StephD

Member
Dec 17, 2013
126
0
16
IIRC that post was just to confirm it was working and I was logged into the C2750 at the time. The main reason you want VT-d is so that you can pass-through the storage controller to the VM to remove another layer (ESXi) from getting in the middle of OS to controller/ drive communication.
Alright thanks. That's what I thought.
 

NeverDie

Active Member
Jan 28, 2015
307
27
28
USA
IIRC that post was just to confirm it was working and I was logged into the C2750 at the time. The main reason you want VT-d is so that you can pass-through the storage controller to the VM to remove another layer (ESXi) from getting in the middle of OS to controller/ drive communication.
I'm not understanding this answer. Are you saying VT-d isn't necessary? Because if it is necessary, then because C2750 doesn't have it, how can it be "working"? Is it working normally?
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
I'm not understanding this answer. Are you saying VT-d isn't necessary? Because if it is necessary, then because C2750 doesn't have it, how can it be "working"? Is it working normally?
You do need VT-d to pass-through a controller. You can still install ESXi and a ZFS supporting OS without it (but I would highly recommend it.)