Sun (alledgedly) stole WAFL from NetApp, how long will it take for them to pinch their provisioning software too?

In the meantime, Red Hat and SuSE carry on chucking out solutions ready to go with Samba, tried and tested software that has been around even longer than Sun's mascot (it even runs on Solaris!).

When I tried to research this area a few months back, I relied on some Sun bloggers posts to help me learn enough about ZFS to set up a NAS, so it's good to see Sun publishing something like an "all in one" guide today.

My "from the trenches" write-up on this fascinating area can be perused here:

http://breden.org.uk/2008/03/02/a-home-fileserver-using-zfs/

Mine's a Schlitz, Ashlee :)

Oh, where's the beer icon -- can I request a beer glass icon be added?

we have some of suns kit here, the hardware was a cinch to install (it was rack mounted, easiest rack mounting i've ever seen) ... in fact if we hadn't watched our fingers we'd have probably lost them :)

We did reinstall the solaris to get the partitions the way we wanted (quite long, but less than an hour if you do a net install).

But if you're setting up ZFS, NFS and CIFS it takes no time at all, seriously, from raw disks to fully working in about 1 min, and most of that is deciding what you wanna call the partitions :)

Schlitz... I mean seriously dude, that stuff is /awful/. This explains much.

Can someone reveal the relevance of this articles title? Be gentle lol

P.S. Paris, coz she probably knows this answer!

"....Once you try zfs and play with pooled storage, snapshots, you can not live without it...." Well, I've only played with the Slowaris version, but I have used the NetApp WAFL original, and it didn't stop me going back to building Linux-Samba fileservers for a fraction of the cost. Sun is so late to market, even M$ have had snapshotting and cloning and volume shadowing for a while with better support, better hardware options, and lower price. But then I tend to do my real storage on real SAN devices like EVAs, XPs, or Clariions, which have better features and real redundancy/resilience.

There the paid Sunbashing droid is back. You bet he is paid by HP for constant trashtalking Sun. He is a RICH consumer to pay for a WAFL homeserver too. And he can have pooled storage with volume management/snapshoting/cloning/compression all integrated with Linux/SAMBA - talk about talking with with the wrong side. The droid now even starts claiming trying solaris with zfs, did you hear that too !!

"....He is a RICH consumer to pay for a WAFL homeserver...." Read the article title, it explicitly mentions NetApp, and the article is about Sun trying to get a chunk of the NAS appliance market in the business space, not home consumer. Slowaris has zero chance of taking on the home consumer NAS appliances as they use very cheap chips and embedded Linux, whereas Slowaris and ZFS needs at least a x86-compliant solution and is therefore going to be more expensive. I use NAS and SAN arrays in the workplace, I use Linux and Windows at home, and I wouldn't consider Slowaris for either. Slowaris is a poor choice for business unless some dummy has selected a Solaris-only app, and then I'd be trying it out on top of Transitive long before I'd consider buying a Sun box; and why choose Slowaris for the home when Linux has a so much richer selection of offerings and community?

As for Slowaris and ZFS for NAS for work, even if it did have some advantage (and so far I have seen none), as a professional I'd be waiting for the outcome of the NetApp suit before installing anything with ZFS into a business environment.

Happy daydreams, Sunshiner!