Questions[illumos](server)

This article implies that it's easy, but gives no details.

I have a double QLogic card in my OmniOS server, connected via two fibre-optic cables to SFP adaptors in my Procurve switch. What I would really like is to aggregate the two connections so I have one double-capacity IP connection between switch and server.

I've looked at cfinfo, cfadm, cfgadm, ipadm, dladm, luxadm, prtpicl and stmfadm but cannot see how to do it. There are many references to using fibre for storage, but none for IP.

I've been looking for the equivalent of fmadm, the fault management configuration tool of Solaris / illumos on FreeBSD. But I'm unable to find an equivalent or even a subset of tools that mimics the features of fmadm.

What kind of software I should be looking for on FreeBSD to at least mimic some features of fmadm?

I'm considering virtualizing a number of guests onto a single server running a recent port of KVM to Illumos. It sounds like my two primary options will be OpenIndiana and SmartOS. The distribution I will end up using needs to meet the following requirements:

• Need to be able to manage and customize via CLI (e.g. change ZFS filesystem/zvol options, attach an external drive and copy data to it, or automatically replicate data to an offsite server using zfs send/receive).
• Need to implement automated ZFS snapshots (e.g. using zfs-auto-snapshot).
• Need to be able to setup automatic email notifications if the health of the server degrades. Essentially, setup periodic ZFS scrubbing, monitor zpool, fault manager, and/or SMART issues, and email when problems are detected, etc. Manually setting this up is OK, as long as the OS lets me.
• Should handle Debian, Ubuntu, and Windows 2008 Server R2 guests with good stability and reasonable performance. These guests will be used in production.
• There should be a reasonable expectation that future releases will continue to be delivered - I don't want to get stuck using a dead-end product.
• Would be nice if it was easy to setup and has some sort of GUI, but this is optional.

Based on these requirements, which distribution would you recommend?

You can assume that this environment won't be deployed until the upcoming OpenIndiana stable release is released. Also, you can assume the server will use a Sandy Bridge Xeon E3-1xxx CPU, so that should take care of KVM compatibility.

Also, how robust/stable is the KVM port to Illumos on either of these distributions? Should I even consider KVM/Illumos for a production environment for now?

We are thinking of evaluating Nexenta for a Tier 2 storage solution. It looks great, but I have doubts over its future after the demise of OpenSolaris.

I know that Nexenta uses an OpenSolaris kernel and ZFS. Now that OpenSolaris is no more, will Nexenta die a slow and painful death?

I have scoured the net, and there does not seem to be any discussion on this topic out there. Anyone in the server fault community know if Nexenta has a future with OpenSolaris dead?

Also, anyone have any "in production" Nexenta experiences to share?

Oracle dumped OpenSolaris in Fall 2010, and it is unclear if Oracle will continue to publicly release updates to ZFS, except maybe after they release their next major version of Solaris.

FreeBSD now has ZFS v28 available for testing.

But where did v28 come from? I notice that the main ZFS website does not show version 28 available. Has this website been abandoned? If so, where is the central website for the ZFS project, so that I can browse the repo, read the mailing lists, read the release notes, etc.

(I realize that OpenSolaris has been dumped by Oracle, and that they are limiting their ZFS releases to the community).