Back at RailsConf a couple months ago, there were a few presentations that made an interesting case for considering OpenSolaris instead of Linux. I had never really considered Solaris much before then. When we got back, one of my friends, Preston Lee, really wanted to dig into it to find out more. He got a buddy that’s a Ph.D. candidate to put his research hat on and compare OpenSolaris ZFS vs. Linux ext3 RAID5.
What do you think of the results? I know I’ve said that Mac beats Ubuntu hands down for the desktop, but I still love Ubuntu on the server side (and I know a great Ubuntu sysadmin). Is anyone using OpenSolaris? I’m all for gathering opinions on this topic. Leave a comment and let us know!
Good question. I have NEVER met a person using OpenSolaris. I know tons of people that use Ubuntu, including myself. However, I spent 5 years in a Sun Solaris Java shop and really liked Solaris. I’ll be following your post to see if any OpenSolaris users pipe in.
Erik
This system holds my iTunes, iPhoto and eyeTV libraries, and all my other various digital tidbits. After having a couple minor yet time consuming issues with the latest SXDE build I decided to go back to the stock Solaris 11/06 release: which still has ZFS and Zones support out-of-the-box. If you’re looking to get started with Solaris, I’d recommend ordering a *free* x64/x86 DVD set from Sun ( http://www2.sun.de/dc/forms/reg_us_2211_391.jsp ) and tossing it on a box known as supported on the respective Hardware Compatibility List, http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/ . For security reasons I have not been able to sufficiently resolve, I’m not sharing the massive ZFS volume with NFS (`zfs set sharenfs=off `), but am using a simple Samba setup instead. I’m able to stream multiple HD videos off it simultaneously over the COTS GigE network, so I’m pretty happy with it right now.
I am setting up a file server for my home office this week. I have been a big Ubuntu fan for a while (desktop and server), but ZFS is forcing me to try OpenSolaris. ZFS is exactly what I have always thought handling multiple hard drives should be. I expect to be adding new disks to this machines every 3-4 months. I don’t want any difficult configuration. Just a few lines and that is it!