I've evaluated in depth several solutions for the home-NAS: Openfiler, FreeNAS, Windows 2003 and Longhorn Server beta, and most recently Windows Home Server.
And now I'm trying out Solaris. The problems with Solaris for me so far are driver support and ease of administration. Driver support is very limited. And when certain hardware IS support, it isn't always clear how to install/use it. Console commands buried in man pages aren't going to cut it anymore -- I hope Unix will join us in the 21st century by the time we hit 2010 :) There aren't many help resources out there. The community isn't large yet. There aren't many forum posts and up-to-date FAQs to draw from. So a new user getting stuck in the mud starts to sink pretty quickly. Simple features like file sharing aren't so simple yet. SMB support isn't all there yet, and there isn't a GUI that takes care of everything for you. There is a "share folder" GUI and a "users" GUI, but how do you share this folder to that user with these access permissions? There is no single coherent front-end for this OS. Gnome lets you do some things one way, CDE some other things another way, and then you have the console (which I couldn't even find in gnome). That said, Solaris x86 seems stable when it isn't in a state of flux. Solaris obviously has a contingent of professional software developers behind it, which is not something you can say about every Microsoft project or Linux distro out there. ZFS is the most awesome and fresh innovation in computing that I can recall. Some people get excited about virtualization or parallel computing, but it is ZFS that gets me hot and bothered. So Solaris can get there (to the point of being a modern and usable OS), but it needs to keep pointed in the right direction. GUI design isn't rocket science (which is a good thing since programmers aren't rocket scientists), but it does take a certain type of mind to figure it out. This concerns me, for instance: http://blogs.sun.com/rmd/entry/opensolaris_appliances because the requirements for OpenSolaris Appliances 1.0 should instead be: NAS server SMB and NFS (IMPLIES) Easy interoperability with other home network devices Simple & easy management First it needs to work, and then it needs to work for [i]people[/i]. Microsoft has its eyes on selling Windows Home Server to several MILLION homes that can use its feature set. They realized some time ago that there is going to be a huge demand for a central redundant home data repository, and they're set to ship a product, with support from hardware vendors, early this year. And basically all WHS does is (a) host files with optional mirroring over devices, (b) offer cluster-based client PC backup software, and (c) offer simple web access to shares and web remote desktop to clients. That's it. No RAID, nothing even close to ZFS or snapshots, no OS redundancy or backup, no redundancy for the client backup data. No email or other fancy local services. And the GUI for those features is a little remote desktop window that has 4 giant buttons: Users, Shares, Backups, and Devices. It is one thing they actually got right. ( http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/whs_03.jpg ) So what does Solaris need to fill that role? Some pretty mundane NIC and ATA controller driver support. Working and manageable SMB shares. An expanded web front end. At this very moment I'm using WHS beta 2, Openfiler, and the latest SXCE. WHS "just works", but it is basically just a pretty front end on existing Windows Server 2003 features. Openfiler works but the GUI and SMB are sketchy, and it is supported by what looks like a team of two guys. Some of the features offered by Solaris make those two alternatives look like a rickshaw next to a Saturn V, but that is just on paper. In reality I can't do anything with it because I can't figure out half its features, and it only supports 1/2 of my ATA controllers and 1/4 of my NICs. On that note, I think I would like a Sun Thumper very much. :~) I would be very happy to use a Solaris that works for me. I hope it enters that state some day. In the mean time I will try to pile up some bug reports and feature requests ;) This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
