Thanks to gea

[MiniKnight]

Thanks @gea for the work on napp-it. I'm going to try convincing my colleagues to switch from FreeNAS. We had a Christmas party where we were talking about how little we like the FreeNAS forums and I made the suggestion because you are on here. napp-it is the only reason I'd use an opensolaris based OS these days.

 

[Rand__]

I gotta say I don't mind the FN forum and I like FN as well but I am grateful for the work @gea is doing - choice is always good and he is doing a great job with Napp-it and the support he is providing

 

[acmcool]

I can attest to this...Moved from Freenas to omnios pro a while ago ...

 

[wildchild]

Wonderful job gea !
Loving napp-it.
Only thing i'd like changed is the webserver you're using

 

[gea]

Thanks to all

btw.
Napp-it can run on any cgi capable webserver. I use mini-httpd as this is the smallest and simpelst of all that can do the job and it is copy and run. Up to last 2016 release I added the Mojolicious Webserver due the websocket server and because I intended to optionally switch completely to the Mojolicious framework and webserver. With current napp-it 2017.01 dev I removed Mojolicious completely as I decided to go with mini-httpd only.

This is an effort to reduce code complexity together with a switch from a quite complicated Javascript driven menu to a pure css menu.

 

[sth]

I have to add my support for Gea here too. He worked with me through some troublesome hardware & performance issues going well beyond what could reasonably be expected from a free tier user.

In terms of OmniOS and Napp-it, performance has been much better than FreeNAS for me and my system and although the setup is a bit more convoluted the end results are worth it IMHO.

 

[dragonme]

agreed... @gea he is always willing to help...!!!

I really wish that napp-it had the eye candy and better monitoring like freenas ... and more of the monitoring and such for free reserving enterprise features like clustering to the paying folks...

I will likely end up having to get a quote to use at home as a student/lab as using it without those features, especially for someone more mac centric like me with no solaris experiance is too painful.

napp-it seems more difficult to use in a mac setting than freenas but I am learning... worse, moving my primary server from a old mac to a esxi /napp-it based OS X install is adding to the complexity...

 

[gea]

Each user interface has its advantages, disadvantages, likes and dislikes.
Napp-it follows a very conservative idea like a classical desktop application combined with a listing of properties that can be modified. This is what I prefer as I work with it all day on many appliances. Napp-it is basically a tool to manage my storage installations.

If you install napp-it on ESXi and OmniOS is your OS of choice, setup is ultrafast as it means only an import of a template. Otherwise or on a barebone setup you have the freedom to choose among some operating systems like Oracle Solaris, OmniOS or OpenIndiana, install them and add napp-it on top. This cannot be as easy as when you install a system where OS and management interface is tight together and you can install both in one step.

Solaris and ZFS were originally an offer for large enterprises. Luckily Sun decided to OpenSource ZFS so others like BSD or now Linux were able to adopt. Sadly Sun did not care about home or Soho environments. This is why BSD/Linux/ZFS solutions are now so widely used. For years Solaris was far ahead of them and even now ZFS integration is best.

One reason why there is only the commercial RSF-1 clustering from high-availability around, beside some unsupported solutions around Opensource Pacemaker. I work on a simple cluster solution based on iSCSI and network mirror but especially on Illumos based systems there are some problems left regarding timeout/hanging of the initiator on a network disconnect. Hope that this will be improved in Illumos.

Setup for OSX is identical like for other SMB clients. Netatalk/AFP is available but a constant source of pain but this is not Solaris specific. You only need to care about a different, mostly more Windows alike behaviour compared to SAMBA solutions.

 

[wildchild]

Thanks to all

btw.
Napp-it can run on any cgi capable webserver. I use mini-httpd as this is the smallest and simpelst of all that can do the job and it is copy and run. Up to last 2016 release I added the Mojolicious Webserver due the websocket server and because I intended to optionally switch completely to the Mojolicious framework and webserver. With current napp-it 2017.01 dev I removed Mojolicious completely as I decided to go with mini-httpd only.

This is an effort to reduce code complexity together with a switch from a quite complicated Javascript driven menu to a pure css menu.

Did you take a look at hiawatha.
It was build with security,size and simplicity in mind.
It's really small,very very fast, has sql injects denial and malicious user ban build in

Have been probing it, but so fat seems very solid
Hiawatha webserver

 

[Rand__]

I work on a simple cluster solution based on iSCSI and network mirror but especially on Illumos based systems there are some problems left regarding timeout/hanging of the initiator on a network disconnect. Hope that this will be improved in Illumos.

Now *that* I would like!

 

[nle]

Hear hear! Thanks @gea, much appreciated


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[the spyder]

Between the work I've done at my last three companies with ZFS, @gea has always been incredibly helpful. I would happily buy you a pint or two for your help over the years.

 

[Xfinity]

Just wanted to chime in: Thanks @gea for your work on napp-it, it has been working excellent since 2013. Moved to a new server this weekend and used your OVA file, worked great!!

 

[Rand__]

I work on a simple cluster solution based on iSCSI and network mirror but especially on Illumos based systems there are some problems left regarding timeout/hanging of the initiator on a network disconnect. Hope that this will be improved in Illumos.

Need to ask - what kind of time frame is attached to this work? short/mid/long term project?

 

[gea]

The basic idea of such a simple poor man's cluster is easy.
Use two storage boxes, create an iSCSI target on both and build a ZFS mirror on them for a realtime raid over the network. Import the mirrored pool on one box or the other via an Initiator. As NFS/SMB shares are a ZFS property, they move as well when you switch over. ZFS acts here like a Cluster management software in this case. To have this working manually, you do not need napp-it.

I have already added a management menu for setup, remote control and manual failover. This works. A background service for an automatic failover in case of a target failure is included but currently not working due some software changes. The development delayed because there was a massive problem with a hanging Initiator on last OmniOS 151018 on a remote target failure and some performance problems with the network raid that needed more tests.

OmniOS 151020 seems more stable regarding the Initiator and I intend to finish the auto service failover until summer and to do more tests for stability and better performance. In the moment it is not production ready and there for tests only regarding optimal settings for pool, targets, initiator and nics and the performanc that one can expect.

 

[Rand__]

Great, thanks for the timeline and the details