Napp-it All-in-One

Napp-it all-in-one is a concept that I brought up around 10 years ago where you use ESXi to virtualize all server and services including a ZFS storage server for general filer use but also for VMs. For this I offer a ready to use ZFS storage server template with web managemen that you can deploy ready to use within minutes, see https://napp-it.org/doc/downloads/napp-in-one.pdf

Main advantage
- very low downtime. ESXi is ultra stable and minimalistic.
It is more like a firmware. It requires less security fixes or updates compared to a full featured OS.

- lowest RAM footprint, mostly the fastest base to virtualize.
Count less than 2GB for ESXi

- best of all support for any type of guest systems
Free-BSD, OSX, Linux, Windows, Solarish

- easy and very fast to recover even disaster recovery (boot disk dead without backup)
re-deploy OmniOS, optionally set your HBA to passthrough and import the datapool
reinstall ESXi and re-add VMs to inventory with a right mouse click on the .vmx file in the VM folder

- perfectly suited to virtualize a fully featured webmanaged ZFS storage appliance
like OmniOS (a very minimalistic but storage feature complete free server OS with FC/iSCSI, NFS and SMB) with storage access via disk rdm or HBA pass-through . OmniOS as a Solaris fork has best of all integration of ZFS and storage services into ZFS and the OS with its kernelbased and multithreaded SMB server, NFS and Comstar, a enterprise grade iSCSI stack. There is a production long term stable edition for production use with a commercial support option and security patches when needed, see OmniOS Community Edition


ps
Based on my concept, you can also use other storage appliances like a Free-BSD based FreeNAS,
see FreeNAS vs. OmniOS / Napp-It | b3n.org

 

ESXi 6.7 u3 is available for download (search via Google, VMware site makes me crazy to search even as a paying user)

Main advantage for All-in- One:
ESXi 6.7u2 comes with a bug that hinders the deployment of my ova template. This is fixed now


# download file from VMware: "update-from-esxi6.7-6.7_update03.zip"

# create datastore1/updates (ESXi filebrowser)
# upload zip

# stop all VMs
# enable esxi shell und ssh

# switch to maintenance mode, connect via putty
# per putty: esxcli software vib update -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/updates/ESXi670-201806001.zip

# reboot
# end maintenance mode

see
VMware ESXi 6.7 Update 3 Release Notes
VMware ESXi updaten – Thomas-Krenn-Wiki

 

Reinstalled my napp-it yesterday and had the problem that my ESXi 6.7 (only U1) didn't cope with the current napp-it OVA because it didn't understand the vmx-15 hardware version.

I just edited the OVA and searched for the "vmx-15" string and edited that to vmx-14 and voilà it worked without problem:

 

Pass-through problems with Intel P4500 on ESXi 6.7/ current OmniOS bloody
Topicbox

This is a bugfix. If it works, this may land in next OmniOS stable 151032 with the result that NVMe pass-through may then no longer work with ESXi 5.

 

I have uploaded a new AiO VM with newest OmniOS 151032 and napp-it free 18.12. For support for new ZFS features like encryption, special vdev, trim or force ashift, update napp-it to 19.dev (20.01 pro) or 19.10 home.

napp-it // webbased ZFS NAS/SAN appliance for OmniOS, OpenIndiana and Solaris : Downloads