OmniOS: Illumos-based OS from OmniTI • Hacker News Board

Re: OmniOS: Illumos-based OS from OmniTI

#11

Post by patrickgzill » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 2:13 AM UTC

hapless wrote: post #10

So we are now nested, what, six deep in forks? I've long since lost track: OpenSolaris => OpenIndiana => Illumos => this new thing ? are there some in-between steps? And we don't have 100% solaris api/abi compatibility. Or a Sun compiler. Or Sun drivers, necessarily. Or a real guarantee of future source releases from Oracle. Who/what is this for?

Who is it for? My view:

People who want to run ZFS for storage usage. ZFS is still better than Linux alternatives like LVM, BTRFS etc. To be picky, there is not an exact counterpart to ZFS under Linux.

And with clones etc. you can set up 1 master KVM image and then clone it 10 or 100 times, saving a lot of disk space in the process (ZFS clones only use the amount of space that is different from the original).

People who have a lot of Solaris experience or have to maintain a lot of Solaris systems already. Also people who are using Solaris zones.

People who are building backend systems that require or can use any/all of the above. Right now, no one cares what your Web SaaS service runs on, as long as it stays up and doesn't lose their data.

Solaris still has a better VM subsystem, IMHO, than Linux does, and performs very well under heavy loads that include disk activity.

Re: OmniOS: Illumos-based OS from OmniTI

#12

Post by wmf » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 3:07 AM UTC

patrickgzill wrote: post #11

hapless wrote: post #10

So we are now nested, what, six deep in forks? I've long since lost track: OpenSolaris => OpenIndiana => Illumos => this new thing ? are there some in-between steps? And we don't have 100% solaris api/abi compatibility. Or a Sun compiler. Or Sun drivers, necessarily. Or a real guarantee of future source releases from Oracle. Who/what is this for?

Who is it for? My view: People who want to run ZFS for storage usage. ZFS is still better than Linux alternatives like LVM, BTRFS etc. To be picky, there is not an exact counterpart to ZFS under Linux. And with clones etc. you can set up 1 master KVM image and then clone it 10 or 100 times, saving a lot of disk space in the process (ZFS clones only use the amount of space that is different from the original). People…

You've explained who Solaris is for, but if you want Solaris why would you want to run a fork of a fork of Solaris? It's still not clear what value this adds relative to Illumos.

Re: OmniOS: Illumos-based OS from OmniTI

#13

Post by jdboyd » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 3:07 AM UTC

hapless wrote: post #10

So we are now nested, what, six deep in forks? I've long since lost track: OpenSolaris => OpenIndiana => Illumos => this new thing ? are there some in-between steps? And we don't have 100% solaris api/abi compatibility. Or a Sun compiler. Or Sun drivers, necessarily. Or a real guarantee of future source releases from Oracle. Who/what is this for?

I don't believe these are all forks. Illumos is a fork of OpenSolaris. OpenIndiana was NOT a fork though, instead it was a distribution of first OpenSolaris and now Illumos.

I compare OpenSolaris/Illumos to the Linux kernel. You typically don't just install them just like you typically don't install Linux. Instead you install a Illumos distribution or you install a Linux distribution. Obviously this isn't a perfect comparison since Illumos contains a lot more of the user land than Linux does.

Current distributions of Illumos appear to include: OpenIndiana, SmartOS, Nexenta, and now OmniOS.

Where do you get that we don't have 100% solaris api/abi compatibility?

One of the pressing projects appears to be to make the Sun Compiler optional. Illumos' preferred compiler to be built with is GCC 3.4.3. They do still rely on dmake and the lint from SunStudio though. Hopefully that can be resolved.

I don't know why we need Sun drivers specifically, unless we are using Sun hardware.

I think we can safely assume now that there will be NO future source releases from Oracle.

As to who this is for, I believe other comments do a good job expressing that.

Re: OmniOS: Illumos-based OS from OmniTI

#14

Post by jdboyd » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 3:14 AM UTC

justauser wrote: post #7

My understanding of hardware support from SmartOS and Illumos was that it only worked on Intel hardware and not AMD. Is this still the case? Relevant to this discussion : Joyent releasing SmartOS http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2887170 AMD support from SmartOS wiki: http://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/SmartOS+Technical+FAQs#S...

Most things work on AMD64. In SmartOS, KVM was the major feature that didn't work on AMD64, but as they said in the faq, the community has been working on that. I can't currently find the testing ISO builds with that support, but here is at least one repo with KVM on AMD support: https://github.com/jclulow/illumos-kvm

Joyent's original work is worse than just Intel only, it requires features found in Core iX and relate Xeon CPUs. This means it doesn't work on Xeon 5xxx chips that are getting affordable and it doesn't work on C2D chips that support VT-x. It sounds like AMD support is further along than supporting older Intel chips.

Re: OmniOS: Illumos-based OS from OmniTI

#15

Post by patrickgzill » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 3:40 AM UTC

wmf wrote: post #12

patrickgzill wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is it for? My view: People who want to run ZFS for storage usage. ZFS is still better than Linux alternatives like LVM, BTRFS etc. To be picky, there is not an exact counterpart to ZFS under Linux. And with clones etc. you can set up 1 master KVM image and then clone it 10 or 100 times, saving a lot of disk space in the process (ZFS clones only use the amount of space that is different from the original). People…

You've explained who Solaris is for, but if you want Solaris why would you want to run a fork of a fork of Solaris? It's still not clear what value this adds relative to Illumos .

For one, KVM virtualization does not run on Illumos, nor Solaris.

Second, Oracle is encumbering Solaris with a not-nice license. I haven't followed the latest developments because I no longer care, since I will never use a non-free OS.

Whether you meant to ask, "Why Illumos over Solaris" or "Why SmartOS or OmniOS over Illumos?" I think I have answered your question :-)

Re: OmniOS: Illumos-based OS from OmniTI

#16

Post by nosequel » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 3:49 AM UTC

rollypolly wrote: post #6

petedoyle wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think so, except its the equivalent of a new Solaris/OpenSolaris distribution (from which Illumos derives).

That's very ambitious. Do you know who they're targeting with this? Legacy systems perhaps?

Honestly, more and more people with big data problems are turning back to solaris kernels over linux because of how many issues there are with linux when you are really running it hard. ZFS, dtrace, and the Solaris kernel on new hardware is really a compelling argument over Linux.

Re: OmniOS: Illumos-based OS from OmniTI

#17

Post by jclulow » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 3:50 AM UTC

jdboyd wrote: post #14

justauser wrote: post #7

My understanding of hardware support from SmartOS and Illumos was that it only worked on Intel hardware and not AMD. Is this still the case? Relevant to this discussion : Joyent releasing SmartOS http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2887170 AMD support from SmartOS wiki: http://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/SmartOS+Technical+FAQs#S...

Most things work on AMD64. In SmartOS, KVM was the major feature that didn't work on AMD64, but as they said in the faq, the community has been working on that. I can't currently find the testing ISO builds with that support, but here is at least one repo with KVM on AMD support: https://github.com/jclulow/illumos-kvm Joyent's original work is worse than just Intel only, it requires features found in Core iX and rela…

That's my repo! The "pre-ept" branch contains experimental support for both AMD CPUs with AMD-V support, and Intel CPUs lacking the EPT feature (Joyent targeted EPT support with their initial port.)

I have a hacked up SmartOS ISO from a month ago with a build of the "pre-ept" KVM module replacing the stock module. If you'd like to test it out, with the disclaimer that it might not work for you, it's here: http://alpha.sysmgr.org/smartos-20120223-jmc2.iso

If it works for you I'd love to hear about it. If it doesn't work and you can provide crash dumps or even remote console access to the machine for me to debug the problem then I'll try and help out. My goal is to get the new support tested and working on as many different bits of hardware as possible and then get it integrated into Joyent's repo once cleaned up and proven.

A lot of us hang out in #illumos on freenode (IRC) if you'd like to chat -- I'm LeftWing.

Re: OmniOS: Illumos-based OS from OmniTI

#18

Post by X-Istence » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 4:25 AM UTC

patrickgzill wrote: post #15

wmf wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've explained who Solaris is for, but if you want Solaris why would you want to run a fork of a fork of Solaris? It's still not clear what value this adds relative to Illumos .

For one, KVM virtualization does not run on Illumos, nor Solaris. Second, Oracle is encumbering Solaris with a not-nice license. I haven't followed the latest developments because I no longer care, since I will never use a non-free OS. Whether you meant to ask, "Why Illumos over Solaris" or "Why SmartOS or OmniOS over Illumos?" I think I have answered your question :-)

KVM virtualization has been added back to Illumos and is also available from Joyent as SmartOS:

http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2011/08/15/kvm-on-illumos/

Hopefully the next release of OpenIndiana will add support for it as well, seeing how they also use the Illumos kernel.

Re: OmniOS: Illumos-based OS from OmniTI

#19

Post by X-Istence » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 4:28 AM UTC

jdboyd wrote: post #14

justauser wrote: post #7

My understanding of hardware support from SmartOS and Illumos was that it only worked on Intel hardware and not AMD. Is this still the case? Relevant to this discussion : Joyent releasing SmartOS http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2887170 AMD support from SmartOS wiki: http://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/SmartOS+Technical+FAQs#S...

Most things work on AMD64. In SmartOS, KVM was the major feature that didn't work on AMD64, but as they said in the faq, the community has been working on that. I can't currently find the testing ISO builds with that support, but here is at least one repo with KVM on AMD support: https://github.com/jclulow/illumos-kvm Joyent's original work is worse than just Intel only, it requires features found in Core iX and rela…

EPT (extended page tables) which are required by the Joyent work made it that much simpler to port the KVM stuff over. EPT simply a lot of the work required and reduce overhead for virtual machines.

Re: OmniOS: Illumos-based OS from OmniTI

#20

Post by X-Istence » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 4:29 AM UTC

rollypolly wrote: post #6

petedoyle wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think so, except its the equivalent of a new Solaris/OpenSolaris distribution (from which Illumos derives).

That's very ambitious. Do you know who they're targeting with this? Legacy systems perhaps?

The opposite actually, the newer KVM stuff for example will not run on older processors, Intel Core iX and very new model Xeon's are required with EPT support.

Many people, my self included, are using Solaris mainly for big storage where the safety of data comes first and foremost. There is still not good competitor to ZFS that works as well and provides the same gaurantees.