What will happen with ZFS now Solaris is gone?

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Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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I used to lots of work E10K and it's newer version, 440's & 880's etc. reliable and stable, slow and expensive and not many features.
Can't say I really cared for them or Sun in general.

Missed OSF1/Tru64 and the old Digital boxes more :)
 

BLinux

cat lover server enthusiast
Jul 7, 2016
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I used to lots of work E10K and it's newer version, 440's & 880's etc. reliable and stable, slow and expensive and not many features.
Can't say I really cared for them or Sun in general.

Missed OSF1/Tru64 and the old Digital boxes more :)
Around the time those E10K were coming out was when I started losing my fondness of Sun. I remember building Solaris machines back then was a pain because the default software was never enough and we had to go build our own packages from open source projects or download from sunfreeware.com. Just seemed so backwards and Linux in the enterprise space was really starting to pickup.

I was really fond of Sun back in the days of the SparcStation 20 and Ultra 2 days... The big clunky boxes like the E250 or E450 just seemed like oversized machines that really didn't perform so great for the money. We started replacing them with HP intel systems running RedHat Linux and got much better performance for our mail servers and other network infrastructure.

I too was a big fan of DEC and still have a PWS500A... another thing I probably should get rid of one of these days; but that one i'm a bit more attached to. In my opinion, that hardware would have had a better chance of longevity had Windows continued to support Alpha and if major Linux distros continued to support Alpha. Compaq's push to sell Tru64 just made that hardware a niche market; they should have put more focus in helping the Linux crowd with Alpha and sell the servers with Linux.
 

dragonme

Active Member
Apr 12, 2016
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anyway... getting this back on track to
What will happen with ZFS now Solaris is gone?

vs a walk down memory lane..


ZFS isnt going anywhere.. that cat and its code are out of the bag... sun / oracle have made very bad decsions in the past closing off new development from open source and code releases.. so whether they decide to start dumping that code out for all to see or not is to be seen but suffice to say that openzfs is persuing most if not all of the best functionality and may in the end produce a better product in openzfs than the current oracle offering.. the best of which is intercompatibility which is lost on the solaris offering as any pools created there are stuck there.

SO in sum.. ZFS is not going to get unseated as the goto filesystem anytime in the near future .. not for big data.. the up and comming file systems are maturing and may at some point surpass ZFS in features and relaiability but for now ZFS maturity (open or solaris) is unbeaten.. and I am sure the openZFS devs have no intention of walking away from it...

oracle could abandon solaris and continue to work on and or license its ZFS but, again, oracle has shown bad judgement in the past and could just scrap everything in their branches going forward.. but it wont derail openZFS at all...

 

Tim

Member
Nov 7, 2012
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Thanks for the trip down memory lane, history is always nice to read about for "new" people like myself.
It saddens me to see Solaris go, I would like to stick with it as long as it makes sense on my homelab.
I'll probably name my storage vm for Solaris just for sentimental reasons.

Let's say I should port my data to a new platform sooner than later. Which one would you choose and why?
OpenZFS on illumos/OpenIndiana, OpenZFS on FreeBSD or napp-it? Or better alternatives?
Wait and see and stay with Solaris for now seems to be a valid option too.
 

Linda Kateley

New Member
Apr 25, 2017
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a lot of old timers like me here... i still have an Ultra 2 w/ dual 400Mhz UltraSPARC-II and 2GB of RAM along with a D1000 disk array. also have an Ultra 5 that I overclocked. sold most of my old sun gear though.. those are the last and will probably throw them on ebay for someone else who might want to play with old stuff... the D1000 +U2 server would probably make for a good ZFS playground.

Oddly enough Blinux I think I still have that hardware in a closet somewhere.. Really hard to get rid of.
 

BLinux

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Jul 7, 2016
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Oddly enough Blinux I think I still have that hardware in a closet somewhere.. Really hard to get rid of.
there probably should be a support group for people who hang on to old Unix gear... the thing is, i had an appreciation for the equipment of that era; probably because i had learned so much on them. so, it's hard to just throw it to a e-recycler like i would a PC. i would rather the equipment go to someone who might actually enjoy it; retro-computing enthusiast or collector. it took me a while to get rid of my HP-UX and SGI hardware until about 7 yrs ago. Found some guy who was really excited to get the SGI Indigo2, I included all the accessories, manuals, and IRIX CD sets I had with it ; it felt good that someone wanted it, and it wasn't just "junk" in their eyes.

that said, i'm making progress... after being reminded of my old stuff in this thread, i pulled out the Ultra 2, D1000, and Ultra 5... going to see if they still work (pretty sure the NVRAM battery must be long gone) and see if I can find someone who wants them.
 

Linda Kateley

New Member
Apr 25, 2017
21
5
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Minnesota
there probably should be a support group for people who hang on to old Unix gear... the thing is, i had an appreciation for the equipment of that era; probably because i had learned so much on them. so, it's hard to just throw it to a e-recycler like i would a PC. i would rather the equipment go to someone who might actually enjoy it; retro-computing enthusiast or collector. it took me a while to get rid of my HP-UX and SGI hardware until about 7 yrs ago. Found some guy who was really excited to get the SGI Indigo2, I included all the accessories, manuals, and IRIX CD sets I had with it ; it felt good that someone wanted it, and it wasn't just "junk" in their eyes.

that said, i'm making progress... after being reminded of my old stuff in this thread, i pulled out the Ultra 2, D1000, and Ultra 5... going to see if they still work (pretty sure the NVRAM battery must be long gone) and see if I can find someone who wants them.
Actually it's not emotional attachment, its financial. In my world they charge $17 a computer to recycle. I tried to bring a couple in one time and they wouldn't take them because they "were owned by a company"