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SmartOS

docs.smartos.org

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Re: SmartOS

#21

Post by nZac »

jeffbee wrote: post #16
nZac wrote: post #3

> SmartOS is a "live OS", it is always booted via PXE, ISO, or USB Key and runs entirely from memory, allowing the local disks to be used entirely for hosting virtual machines without wasting disks for the root OS. Does anyone know if something like this is possible with Proxmox? I've got three servers I'm thinking of setting up as a small cluster and would like to boot them from a single image instead of manually se…

It depends on what "this" you meant, but in general the ways of netbooting an OS are many and varied. You'd have to declare what kind of root device you ultimately want, such as root on iSCSI. Personally, I feel that "smartOS does not support booting from a local block device like a normal, sane operating system" might be a drawback and is a peculiar thing to brag about.

What I'm looking to achieve are three identical proxmox host boxes. As soon as you finish the install you now have three snowflakes no matter how hard you try.

In the case of smartOS (which I've never used) it would seem like that is achieved in the design because the USB isn't changing. Reboot and you are back to a clean slate.

Isn't this how game arcades boot machines? They all netboot from a single image for the game you have selected? That is what it seems smartOS is doing but maybe I'm missing the point.

Re: SmartOS

#23

Post by [deleted] »

nZac wrote: post #3

> SmartOS is a "live OS", it is always booted via PXE, ISO, or USB Key and runs entirely from memory, allowing the local disks to be used entirely for hosting virtual machines without wasting disks for the root OS. Does anyone know if something like this is possible with Proxmox? I've got three servers I'm thinking of setting up as a small cluster and would like to boot them from a single image instead of manually se…

[deleted]

Re: SmartOS

#24

Post by re-lre-l »

I am a huge fan of SmartOS. Back in the 2010s (around 2012), I was advocating its use in production at a small startup I worked. The SunOS kernel, ZFS, zero install, immutable core, convenient way to manage containers and VMs together - all of this looked great on paper, especially containers.

In reality, I ended up running almost everything in VMs. The only thing worked well natively was nginx. MongoDB, Mysql, even our php backend (some libraries) had issues, unfortunately.

A year ago, I considered SmartOS again as a home lab driver, and no success again, Linux just has better support: drivers, pci passthrough, etc... and now with containers+vm through Proxmox or anything else. You can even run a k8s+kubevirt with zfs practically out of the box as a complete overkill though.

Re: SmartOS

#25

Post by cthalupa »

QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #2

I remember several years ago, SmartOS was being mentioned many times on HN. Joyent, the company behind SmartOS, was since acquired, and I don’t usually see anyone talking about SmartOS nowadays. Is anyone on HN using SmartOS these days?

Home stuff was the last holdout for me, but even that has been replaced by Proxmox these days. I used SmartOS for a solid 7-8 years, though, and like it for most of that time.

I couldn't point to any one single major reason that prompted the switch - just lots of small annoyances stemming from the world expecting you to be running Linux instead of Solaris, and once you move away from zones, you lose one of the most compelling reasons for being on SmartOS

Re: SmartOS

#26

Post by itsanaccount »

rjzzleep wrote: post #5
QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #2

I remember several years ago, SmartOS was being mentioned many times on HN. Joyent, the company behind SmartOS, was since acquired, and I don’t usually see anyone talking about SmartOS nowadays. Is anyone on HN using SmartOS these days?

It was acquired by Samsung, which is notoriously bad at open source. But the reason why it quietly faded into the background wasn't that. It was that Joyent's ex Sun people had an annoying elitism that made them not care about working with the community.

I mean when you're that far ahead of the class is it any wonder?

Re: SmartOS

#27

Post by effdee »

nwilkens wrote: post #17

SmartOS is the core operating system for Triton datacenter -- https://www.tritondatacenter.com Triton is the orchestration of SmartOS compute nodes. Code + issues are active under https://github.com/TritonDataCenter (smartos-live, illumos-joyent, triton, etc.), and docs are at https://docs.smartos.org/ . SmartOS is released every two weeks, and Triton is released every 8 weeks -- see https://www.tritondatacenter.com/…

The first link's broken as it includes the semicolon.

Re: SmartOS

#28

Post by tombert »

Genuine question: in 2026, what does SmartOS (or any other Illumos/Solaris OS) buy you over something like Linux or FreeBSD?

Re: SmartOS

#29

Post by fridder »

re-lre-l wrote: post #24

I am a huge fan of SmartOS. Back in the 2010s (around 2012), I was advocating its use in production at a small startup I worked. The SunOS kernel, ZFS, zero install, immutable core, convenient way to manage containers and VMs together - all of this looked great on paper, especially containers. In reality, I ended up running almost everything in VMs. The only thing worked well natively was nginx. MongoDB, Mysql, even…

not sure if you have given FreeBSD a chance yet and it has an in-progress jail/vm frontend: https://github.com/AlchemillaHQ/Sylve
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