OpenSolaris
Nevada Build 128b (snv_128) is now closed and available as BFU or source tarball. This means that those who want to play with ZFS Dedup but don't want to build from source can give it a go. It should be said that there have been a lot of exciting enhancements to Nevada over the last couple of builds. Here are some of the changes in the last couple builds: ZFS Dedup zpool recovery support More ZFS fixes and improvements than you ...
ZFS Deduplication was recently putback (Sun terminology for "commit") to ON (Solaris's primary codebase). That means it should go out at snv_128 (Build 128) due later this week. Unable to wait for the BFU archives I resorted to actually building the code myself to play; something I've not felt the burning need to do for at least 2 years (I'll blog about that shortly). Here's the initial review... In typical fashion putting ZFS ...
If you were at or watched the events from CommunityOne this year you saw some nifty demos of Crossbow's "Vwire" capabilities through a graphical demo tool. Today that Virtual Wire Demo Tool is available for download! Now, personally, I'm not a fan of the tool. GUI's such as this are useful for demonstrating complex system utilities in an executive friendly way... but Crossbow is so easy to use it needs no pretty GUI, using dladm ...
Max Bruning is one of my great heros. He's an amazing guy and incredible educator. At CommunityOne he did a 3 hour presentation on developing Solaris Device Drivers and, perhaps even more important to the readers of this blog, kernel debugging. If you have a passing familiarity with core dump analysis using mdb, you'll learn an incredible amount of skills from the latter portion of his presentation. Developing in OpenSolaris: Solaris ...
At CommunityOne in San Francisco I did a 2 hour "Deep Dive" on ZFS titled "Becoming a ZFS Ninja". These talks focused on creating a firm understanding of core functionality and then briefly discussed higher level functionality. Lots of time was spent on pool construction and physical layout, as those areas are often overlooked. Becoming a ZFS Ninja (part 1) Becoming a ZFS Ninja (part 2) My Slide Deck (PDF) As always the ...
Recorded at the Kernel Conference Australia 2009, Jeff Bonwick & Bill Moore, creators of ZFS, present: ZFS: The Next Word You can download the slides in PDF. Please ignore the fact that these slides are tagged for SDC, its the same preso. Topics included: Hybrid Pools User Quotas RAIDZ3: Triple Parity Dedup (the first public word on it besides "its coming...") ZFS Crypto ... and much more. Must watch!
As of Solaris Nevada Build 121 the virtualization technologies within Solaris have hit a very important milestone. Solaris Containers (Zones) are exceptional and well proven as a powerful solution. xVM (Xen) has been rev'ed up to Xen 3.3.1 and is both mature and capable. VirtualBox continues to provide a solution that competes strongly against VMWare solutions, especially given that its got better cross-platform support, runs as fast as ...
On the fence about going LISA '09? Here's an added incentive! Attached the the show will be the OpenSolaris Security Summit. I personally know that the Solaris Security Group has put a lot of thought and effort into making this a great event. The schedule isn't fully fleshed out yet, but I highly recommend you attend if you can. ZFS Crypto.... what else do I need to say? Be there!
I've been exceedingly slow, despite prodding, to respond to the announcement of Solaris Express Community Edition's (SX:CE) end-of life. I have been largely because I've warned against it many times before, and I shall explain my thoughts on the matter again... The death of SX:CE represents the end of an era. The cornerstone of any distribution is its installer(s) and packaging. Consider Debian or Red Hat or SuSE. Fundamentally they ...
Technical posts have flat lined in this blog and I've prided myself on staying more technically focused than other Solaris/UNIX blogs.... but I admit, I'm running out of ideas! So I'm reaching out to you, my readers.... what do you want me to write about?