Many STH readers utilize OpenIndiana as the basis for their ZFS storage servers. OpenIndiana is the open source distribution that has largely taken the baton from OpenSolaris after that project turned closed source. It is based on the Illumos core. The OpenIndiana team just released its 2016.10 “Hipster” snapshot which includes a few interesting features. You can see the full changelog and find links to downloads here.
A popular Web GUI for OpenIndiana based ZFS storage servers is napp-it. We are fans of the napp-it + OpenIndiana solution especially as that makes ZFS administration more user-friendly. We even maintain a buyer’s guide with Top Picks for napp-it + OpenIndiana hardware for ZFS servers based on the solution. If you want to check those out here are component guides for the solution where we break down the top choices in each category.
- Top Picks for napp-it and OmniOS: Boot Drives
- Top Picks for napp-it and OmniOS: Hard Drives
- Top Picks for napp-it and OmniOS: L2ARC Drives (SSDs)
- Top Picks for napp-it and OmniOS: ZIL/ SLOG Drives
- Top Picks for napp-it and OmniOS: Host Bus Adapters (SAS HBAs)
There are a few key changes that should be highlighted for those running ZFS servers. Perhaps the biggest comes in the form of boot options. OpenIndiana 2016.10 now uses the FreeBSD loader. The installer can now be set to boot from ZFS arrays (e.g. RAID-Z) which is a nice feature.
One especially fun tidbit in the changelog:
top now shows ZFS ARC usage stats
Overall we are excited that the project continues to make progress. The OpenSolaris derived OS has a lot of features that admins of old Sun servers will find attractive (e.g. DTrace). If you want to get started with napp-it and OpenIndiana the STH forums have a great community of folks using that solution.
If you want to try OpenIndiana 2016.10, you can grab it here.
