Let me add a few comments about stability or production use of OpenSource or OpenStorage solutions, can be napp-it or others. Basically the questions are.
- Is ZFS stable?
no question, yes. In production use with Petabytes of storage
- Is ZFS on the operating system stable (BSD, Linux, Solaris)
no question, yes. In production use with Petabytes of storage
Beside genuine ZFS from Oracle for Solaris with some unique features like ZFS encryption or fast sequential resilvering that are not in Open-ZFS, all Open-ZFS solutions share the same ZFS codebase so ZFS filesystem differences are minimal. For me the golden ZFS standard are Solarish based systems as ZFS is native there with a unique integration of ZFS and services like iSCSI, NFS and SMB into the OS
Remains the question about the OS itself. There are options that I would not declare stable like OpenIndiana dev, others like BSD, Solaris or OmniOS are stable with continous development and security/ bugfixes. Oracle Solaris is one of the big Unix Players.
For me, the OS family question (BSD, Linux or Solarish) is much more relevant as the question what management GUI you are using on top, can be FreeNAS, Nas4free or ZFSGuru on BSD, NexentaStor, napp-it or Oracle solutions on Solarish or for a GUI for Linux.
- Is the OS +management software stable?
This is different on solutions. FreeNAS x is tight to BSD y release. NexentaStor is based on Illumos like OmniOS but they support their own distribution/variant of Illumos with some improvements that are not in Illumos/OmniOS.
Napp-it is not tight to an OS release or even OS distribution. It is an option if you want to use a core enterprise operating system where it adds management and usability. For production use, you should use Oracle Solaris or OmniOS. You can also use OpenIndiana but I would not do on a production setup. Linux is another napp-it option but with reduced functionality
Beside that, napp-it development started about 8 years ago on OpenSolaris and NexentaCore. Most of napp-it especially ZFS management is very stable, other parts like appliance clustering and failover are under development and not yet production ready.
- Is the hardware stable with the OS of choice?
Depends on Hardware and OS
If you are not experienced, use a suggested SuperMicro solution or ask for independent consultation ex
Kateley Company – Simplifying Complexity, Linda Kateley is very skilled on BSD based ZFS solutions and Solaris based ZFS solutions and offers training as well.
Anyway, prefer a qualified local reseller for server equippment that you can trust. I would prefer SuperMicro as preconfigured built to order option but can be Dell, HP or Lenovo.
And yes, napp-it on Solaris or OmniOS is in production use up to Petabyte storage solutions.