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seankoshy

New Member
Aug 8, 2012
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Hello all,

I've been reading about running a production OI/Napp-it setup, and it seems that things should be ok aside from no paid support(like Nexenta). I've setup a basic SAN at home presenting iSCSI to my 2008 R2 server and it has been working great with no issue for the past 6+ months.

Regarding Napp-it, I can't believe how such a great package is free - what an easy to use interface.

Plan on doing the same thing for a Hyper-V server using iSCSI for storage.
SETUP:
SM CSE-847A-R1400LPB
SM X8DAH+-f / 72GB RAM / 1 x X5675
24 x 3TB SATA Hitachi drives (debating between striping mirrors, or using triple mirrors for safety - capacity isn't as much of an issue with 3tb drives)
2 x ZeusRAM for ZIL (hopefully!)
LSI HBA (9211-8i / 9207-8i)
X520-DA2

Any best practices for iSCSI with Hyper-V, block size / etc? Anyone currently using async replication to another device, or any other add-ons that Napp-it has?

Anyone know of any companies offering support for OI/Napp-it in case of any issue in the future?

Thanks in advance,
 

MiniKnight

Well-Known Member
Mar 30, 2012
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NYC
Why that CPU and not a newer Xeon E5 esp if you are buying a 9207?

ZeusRAM wowzies!!! Need benchmarks n' pics if you do build that!
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
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Plan on doing the same thing for a Hyper-V server using iSCSI for storage.
SETUP:
SM CSE-847A-R1400LPB
SM X8DAH+-f / 72GB RAM / 1 x X5675
24 x 3TB SATA Hitachi drives (debating between striping mirrors, or using triple mirrors for safety - capacity isn't as much of an issue with 3tb drives)
2 x ZeusRAM for ZIL (hopefully!)
LSI HBA (9211-8i / 9207-8i)
X520-DA2

Any best practices for iSCSI with Hyper-V, block size / etc? Anyone currently using async replication to another device, or any other add-ons that Napp-it has?

Anyone know of any companies offering support for OI/Napp-it in case of any issue in the future?

Thanks in advance,

Some thoughts about:

With the Mainboard i would think about using newer 2011 based ones from the X9 series
They have more and faster RAM and are more energy efficient. I would think about using more RAM
There are even boards with 10 GBe onboard

If you use only one Xeon in a dualboard, you can use only one RAM bank

If you care about security and best I/O performance, you can stripe triple mirrors
I do that too with my critical NFS datastores for ESXi

Its enough to have one ZeusRAM. It is very unlikely to have a server crash and a ZEUS-RAM failure at the same time.
The second mirrored ZIL can help under this very rare condition.

about support
You may have problems to find companies offering support for a whitebox OI/napp-it setup .
Not to forget, both are in dev-state. Even Oracle and Nexenta offers support only for their own hardware options.

But there are even bigger companies using OI with napp-it in production, not only because it is free but because
the sources are open so they can add missing options and they can fix problems optionally themselves -
and because napp-it is a transparent interface to OI. You can disable napp-it and do all via CLI if desired.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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gea - one important note here is that if you do go LGA 2011 you only get 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes per CPU. On dual processor LGA 2011 boards if you do not have one CPU installed you will likely lose some PCIe slot functionality and/ or onboard device functionality so you do need to check this.
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
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hello Patrick
thanks for the addition.

If one use a dual 2011 mainboard, its often not because of the extra CPU power but mostly because of more and faster four channel RAM and more of fast pci-e slots - here you need the second CPU. Using two of the slower and cheaper Xeons is mostly a good idea for a storage server where CPU is not a major concern. (In contrast to RAM that is used as ultrafast read-cache - the more the faster)
 
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seankoshy

New Member
Aug 8, 2012
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Thanks for the all the info guys ...

Gea, I was under the assumption that if a single ZIL device dies while in use, you have the chance of losing data / corrupting the associated pool? Otherwise, I would definately prefer just to use one ZeusRAM.

The reason for the older board / proc was that I already have it - but can look at getting the funds for another board / proc.

Using 2 x 9211-8i (already own) / 2 x 9207-8i. I guess here maybe I should also look at just using 4 x 9207-8i as well?

Thx,
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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If you already have the CPU/ motherboard, not a bad idea to keep using that. Also, could sell the CPU and get something like E5606's and pocket a few dollars.
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
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Thanks for the all the info guys ...

Gea, I was under the assumption that if a single ZIL device dies while in use, you have the chance of losing data / corrupting the associated pool? Otherwise, I would definately prefer just to use one ZeusRAM.

The reason for the older board / proc was that I already have it - but can look at getting the funds for another board / proc.

Using 2 x 9211-8i (already own) / 2 x 9207-8i. I guess here maybe I should also look at just using 4 x 9207-8i as well?

Thx,

A ZIL device logs sync writes. The log is not used during normal operation. If it fails the default on-pool ZIL is used instead with the effect of a lower speed only. A mirrored ZIL can avoid this speed degration under this condition.

If your system crashes together or because of a ZIL failure, then the last writes (last 5s) may be lost. If you want to be prepared of this rare failure you need a mirrored ZIL as well.

about controller:
I would not expect any speed difference when using the newer 9207 instead the 9211 on pci e -8x, so use what you have.
 

odditory

Moderator
Dec 23, 2010
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Regarding Napp-it, I can't believe how such a great package is free - what an easy to use interface.
I can't believe it either based on how many hours gea has into it now.

@gea you really need to come up with a mechanism to be compensated for your hard work, whether it be a paid or pro version with some enhanced functionality or maybe holding back some features in the free version, else you're doing yourself a disservice. There's a school of thought that says people don't appreciate what they get for free as much as what they've paid for, psychologically speaking. I think there's some truth in that because that's been my experience.
 
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Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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I totally agree. One of the big reasons I have been starting to publish more ZFS All-in-One related content is because I do want to take advantage of napp-it sponsorship one of these days but it would eat up basically all STH revenue (150 euro/ mo is more than the site makes most months.)

After the RAID Calculator I'm building two more tools, the second one is a bigger effort that I am going to put an investment behind just finishing requirements right now. Will see if gea has interest in a development project where I would pay for a feature to be developed. (gea if you read this I sent you a PM, not going to be a big job.)
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
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hello Odditory, hello Patrick

I agree with this. Napp-it has reached a state, where even larger enterprises are using OI + napp-it
instead of netApp, NexentaStor or Oracle - not only because of the price but because of a solution where
sources are open so they are able to add something or to fix problems themselves. Napp-it is a transparent
user-interface for a ZFS server, so even a "let us disable the GUI and do everything on vanilla OS via CLI" is an option.

In the past, napp-it was pure hobby where i offered my insights and efforts for free. I do not intend to change
this with the base of napp-it but earnings are needed to ensure the future of napp-it. It should not end like
the ZFSGuru project or some other free projects that get into problems because of a too much work for no money.

So there are some nonfree extensions now and maybee there will be a separate pro-version with support someday
or with sublicencing to others that intend to offer a supported or bundled pro versions together with hardware.

At the moment it is ok like it is (no changes prior a 1.0 release)
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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Very supportive of the effort as you describe. Thanks again gea!
 

Jeggs101

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Dec 29, 2010
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Only issue is that once it goes paid, it gets a lot of competition. I do like napp-it tho and good to see gea on these forums.
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
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While OpenIndiana with or without napp-it is very competitive regarding features and stability to NetApp, NexentaStor, Oracle and others in a lot of use cases, it lacks the support-option with SLA and such things. While I would never offer support on a per Terabyte base like NexentaStor (does doubling the capacity and the support costs doubles needed support?), it is evident that most enterprises do not use anything without support options. But it must not be premium of NetApp or NexentaStor.

But a free OS like OpenIndiana and a free napp-it base edition like now keeps absolut essential.
 

odditory

Moderator
Dec 23, 2010
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No doubt end users at home storing some movies with OI+NappIt for free is one thing, but if I were you it would probably bother me if enterprises were leveraging the hard work that went into Napp-It for free. Sure they dont *need* Napp-It on top of OI, but most IT Pro's these days in their 20's, 30's & 40's aren't from a cmdline background on average, so if anything, NappIt is saving companies money in time and training costs.

A colleague of mine writes storage related software, and for years it was available for free while in "beta", and when he finally flipped the switch and made it paid and licensed software, he was surprised how many system integrators came out of the woodwork - integrators which had been using and benefitting from his free his software all along - and were happy to pay for a license to keep the updates faucet on. Yes there was the small minority of opensource squeaky wheels that think all *nix software should always be free no matter what, but the group voting with their wallets and buying the software far outnumbered them.

Anyway keep giving thought to what would be a fair compensation for your work at least from the business sector. Maybe offering paid support is the way to begin. And another thing to consider is getting some compensation could enable you to hire additional programming help to make the interface even more polished and commercial-grade in terms of aesthetics, while you continue working under the hood on feature-set enhancements that are attractive to businesses.

@OP Sorry to derail the thread so hard here. ;)
 
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seankoshy

New Member
Aug 8, 2012
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Hah ... good discussion!

Thanks for the info on the ZIL Gea, did some more reading and realize for my needs a single device will be enough (and save some money).

I agree completely with previous posters, and would readily accept some kind of paid support / paying for the software for business use - and would actually feel better about using it knowing I could get proper support. I think it could greatly increase business use knowing there's a fallback.

Something like how PFSense runs would be worth considering ... I have used their firewall software for all my clients, and have a paid support agreement with them for any issues that might arise that I cannot fix. Since it was free to use, I was able to get my feet wet, before starting to deploy it.