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<p><b>Its time to consider pla</b><b>n</b><b> B/C ??</b><br>
to: omnios-discuss, openindiana-discuss, smartos-discuss<br>
<br>
The announcement of OmniTi to cancel OmniOS from now to then is a
real disaster not only for OmniOS users but for the whole Illumos
platform. Many users who want a free Solaris based OS especially
in production environments selected OmniOS as their preferred
Illumos platform mainly with use cases storage and general server
applications.<br>
<br>
The reasons:<b> OmniOS=</b><b>Up to date Illumos</b><br>
+ commercial support option (although way too expensive)<br>
+ own developments like LX zones integration from SmartOS or
drivers<br>
+ stables/long term stables with very experienced full time staff
(thanks to Dan and Dale again)<br>
<br>
As OmniTi has released a new stable 151022, I/we have some time
maybe to the end of the year unless OmniOS is out of sync with
Illumos in a non tolerable amount. Bugfixes of serious problems
may be the case until then (hope so).<br>
<br>
What are the/my options<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Plan A</b><br>
Hope for a continuation of OmniOS as a well maintained
community/commercial project with further development, ongoing
stables and bugfixes optionally with some paid contributions under
the umbrella of a firm or at least with some experienced members
that were already resonsible for OmniOS or an Illumos distribution
and that can be trusted for next years.<br>
<br>
While I hope for this, I doubt that this is a serious option. I
switched from OpenIndiana to OmniOS three years ago as the OI
community was too weak and development nearly stalled at that
time. I am not interested in a new weak OmniOS community for a
distribution that should be used as a production system. The
OmniOS community will be propably too small forever as we already
have the Illumos community project OpenIndiana nearly identical to
OmniOS from distribution, features and use cases. And a very
important thing: The brand OmniOS has already a very bad name as a
dead/failed project in the press mostly affecting Illumos as well.
<br>
</p>
<p><br>
<b>Plan B</b><br>
OpenIndiana is a quite established community project for an up to
date Illumos distribution. I would say its nearly identical to
OmniOS beside the missing LX improvements from OmniOS but with an
additional GUI option. I hope to see LX zones upstreamed to
Illumos. OpenIndiana currently offers a rolling development of
newest Illumos bits with snapshots every 6 months but without an
additional stable repository with backported security fixes. Every
update give you the newest Illumos fixes and features but also the
newest bugs (ongoing dev, unstable).<br>
<br>
If OmniOS has to become a community project, I undoubtly would
prefer a merge of the two distributions up from next releases.
OpenIndiana with a stable repo for every snapshot and with a repo
as development path would give me what was the main advantage of
OmniOS beside commercial support. Access to such a stable repo
optionally under an OmniOS brand may be even a paid (if
affordable) option. Such a merge would strengthen Illumos at first
place but also free OpenSource distributions like OmniOS and
OpenIndiana. <br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Plan C</b><br>
There is another free Illumos distribution with an enterprise
background suited for datacenter use: SmartOS. It even adds unique
Cloud and virtualisation features like KVM, Solaris zones, Linux
zones and Docker support. As it is running from RAM with
everything important on a datapool it is a very stable/ easy
recoverable option but it lacks some features in the global zone
that are required for a storage server. An additional plus is the
pkgin repo with lots of supported long term stable services.<br>
<br>
Using SmartOS would require a mechanism to allow storage services
like SSH, Crossbow, iSCSI, NFS and SMB on the global zone with an
option to save/restore settings from a datapool to be persistent.
To be honest, a SmartOS that is capable to act as a storage
appliance would be my dream option, at least as an additional
option. This would require that SmartOS is not actively hindering
this or preferable is helping to implement a save/restore option
for global zone settings&features.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Discuss</b><br>
But whatever option is coming, end the Illumos fragmentation for
the sake of one strong free community distribution with a solid
number of contributors and one freely available with a commercial
background like SmartOS/ Samsung owned. <br>
</p>
<p><br>
Any comments from OmniOS, OI, SmartOS (omnios-discuss,
openindiana-discuss, smartos-discuss) communities? <br>
I have send this to all three lists, so optionally answer all
lists<br>
</p>
<p><br>
best regards<br>
<br>
<br>
Gea/ napp-it.org<br>
</p>
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