Report: Sun Open Storage

[Karl Goetz]

On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 19:59 +0100, Mark Schouten wrote:
> Hi Onno, and all. See my reaction inline...
> 
> 
> On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 17:18 +0900, Onno Benschop wrote:
>  If anything in what I write here is
> > contradicted by what Sun says, perhaps you should ask Sun before relying
> > on what I said.
> 
> As a Sun partner, I've heard about this program some time ago. And I
> must say I can't really agree with the negative feel you give this box.
> I think, in general, you looked at it the wrong way. Let me get a bit
> clearer on this.

Good to have more perspectives.

> 
> > My questions related to some of what was said and I opened up with "How
> > do I interface this with other stuff? As in, how do I use my software to
> > talk to your hardware?" The response was not good. Basically, you need
> > to use their web-interface.
> 
> There's also a cli, I've been told.

I've dealt with equipment before with a web UI which did stuff, then a
CLI which was a few 'reset password' level of commands.
Not saying the Sun box is like that, just that "it has a cli" doesnt
mean its useful :)


> 
> > If I wanted to have a fail over system, could I do that at a block
> > level? "No, not in this release."
> 
> That's something that would be really nice. They (Sun) are working on
> getting feedback from partners to add functionality to next releases.

Does this mean your passing on the request? ;)

> > So, coming in the door thinking, wow, Sun has an Open Storage system
> > that might be able to be managed and deployed in a Ubuntu Server
> > environment, I went out the door thinking, Sun has built a system that
> > could be really nice, but instead they've built another proprietary
> > solution that doesn't really talk to anything else and cannot really be
> > managed in anything but a single deployment.
> 
> It's not really proprietary. It's OpenSolaris. Download and deploy it,
> be my guest. It's hell. :) They've created an appliance for which
> they've used Open Source software, and added some proprietary stuff to
> make life more easier. 

If you go with the FSF concept of 'proprietary', then even though the
source is available its still proprietary. That's because you cant
properly exercise the 4 freedoms. If you go with the 'no source is
proprietary' view, then by and large, its not a proprietary system.

> Compare it to Ubuntu (Open source) and Landscape (closed source). Ubuntu
> rules, landscape would be nice to have, but is closed source. (Even
> worse, you cannot get the serverpart so you would depend op Canonical
> for it).

Just because Canonical produces proprietary support software doesn't
justify other companies doing it (or making it an ok thing to do).
kk

> 
> I think you looked at this box the wrong way, rethink and compare it to
> Netapp's and EMC's..
> 
> -- 
> Mark Schouten <mark at prevented.net>
> 
> 
-- 
Karl Goetz <karl at kgoetz.id.au>
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