Napp-it All-in-One

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gea

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Dec 31, 2010
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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
 

gea

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Dec 31, 2010
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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
 
Last edited:

daisho

New Member
Apr 25, 2019
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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:
vmx.PNG
 

gea

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Dec 31, 2010
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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.
 

crazyj

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Nov 19, 2015
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Is this OVF template for OmniOS 151032 / napp-it free 18.12 only for ESXi 6.7? Does it care or have any advantage for a VMFS6 vs VMFS5 datastore?
 

gea

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Dec 31, 2010
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The template is created with ESXi 6.7u3 and may work up from 6.0
If you need a storage VM ex for ESXi 5.5, either use an older template and update OmniOS/napp-it or create the VM manually

- create a bootdisk 40GB
- boot and install OmniOS from iso (VM type: Solaris 11-64)
- add vmware tools via pkg install open-vm-tools
- add and use a vmxnet3 vnic
- install napp-it via wget and run a System > Tuning (default)
- add TLS suppport (email alerts), napp-it // webbased ZFS NAS/SAN appliance for OmniOS, OpenIndiana and Solaris : Downloads

Difference between VMFS 5 & VMFS 6
 

crazyj

Member
Nov 19, 2015
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I’m updating to either 6.5 or 6.7 already. I’m just wanting to be clear on what’s required by the ova/ovf. If VMFS5 or VMFS6 doesn’t matter, I’ll probably leave in at VMFS5 so I don’t need to migrate my old VMs. I’m having a bit of trouble deleting the VMFS6 data store and creating the VMFS5 store.

What I was wondering is if there are really any advantages to using 6.7 over 6.5 and VMFS5 vs VMFS6, but it doesn’t seem like omnios leverages and of the improvements that were made in ESXi (though it sounds like the 6.7 host has a better monitoring system)