illumos gets documentation!

With this integration:

changeset:   13304:b54231762cfa
tag:         tip
user:        Richard Lowe 
date:        Mon Mar 14 14:05:30 2011 -0400

description:
        243 system manual pages should live with the software
        Reviewed by: garrett@nexenta.com
        Reviewed by: gwr@nexenta.com
        Reviewed by: trisk@opensolaris.org
        Approved by: gwr@nexenta.com

We now have manual pages in illumos. (Only the English pages -- POSIX locale -- are kept in the illumos code repository.)

This is key because it means that code and documentation can be maintained together, which is how some other projects (but not Solaris) manage it.

So, got a problem with the man(1) pages on illumos? File a bug! There is a category called "manpage"... please let us know, or even better, contribute a fix!

Google Summer of Code & illumos

Got a pet project for illumos you would like someone to take up, and would do yourself if you had time? Like working with bright up and coming stars?

Are you a student looking to get involved with a nascent community of world class engineers, and have some free time on your hands this summer?

Maybe you can participate in Google's Summer of Code. We hope illumos will be selected to participate this. Some ideas are posted on our wiki already, but I'd love to hear other proposals. We have a very short window of time before we have to submit our mentoring org application, so let us know!

COMSTAR and SCSI UNMAP

I just pushed this for Dan McDonald into illumos:

changeset:   13297:4b9dc4ca8e9f
tag:         tip
user:        Dan McDonald <danmcd@nexenta.com>
date:        Fri Mar 04 13:57:09 2011 -0800
description:
701 UNMAP support for COMSTAR
Reviewed by: Garrett D'Amore <garrett@nexenta.com>
Reviewed by: Eric Schrock <eric.schrock@delphix.com>
Reviewed by: George Wilson <gwilson@zfsmail.com>
Approved by: Garrett D'Amore <garrett@nexenta.com>

This change represents a significant new feature in COMSTAR and ZFS, which will greatly benefit people use SCSI target mode functionality in situations involving over-provisioning. More on that in a minute...

The feature itself was developed by Sumit Gupta for Nexenta, and is part of our upcoming 3.1 release of NexentaStor.

Subsequently, Dan took ownership of that code, and working with Eric and George (who are well established ZFS gurus and had significant and useful feedback) improved it still further, and got the code into illumos proper. I believe this represents the first significant ZFS feature to go into the tree since the illumos fork, and also amply demonstrates the collaboration in the illumos community.

I'm looking forward to more collaboration like this in the community.

Now, what does this feature give you? Well, if you're using SCSI Target Mode (either via iSCSI or Fibre Channel or FCoE) to serve up storage to systems running NTFS or ext4, you will be able to make better use of your storage.

Traditionally, when a file was deleted from a filesystem, it was mostly a matter of book-keeping in the meta data in the filesystem. There was nothing to note this in the underlying storage.

With newer SSDs, and with COMSTAR, the ability to get back this notification is incredibly useful. SSDs want it to do garbage collection or other optimizations thereby improving performance.

COMSTAR wants it because now when your thinly-provisioned zvol gets the notification, we can return the storage back to the pool. Prior to this change, the zvol could only grow, it could never shrink. Now, we can give storage back to the pool when you delete a file on the initiator. This is huge in environments running with a lot of VMs using thinly provisioned storage with overallocation.

Anyway, this is now in illumos thanks to Nexenta, and notably, Oracle doesn't have it. Of course, they are welcome to pick up the code for it, but they will need to follow the terms of the CDDL if they choose to do so, the same as everyone else.

SCALE illumos Photos

As promised, I'd send illumos photos from SCALE. Here's the illumos booth staff, from left to right there is Roland, Garrett (your humble author), Delya, Albert, and Rocky. Rocky was there representing Area Data Systems, who are both Nexenta partners and illumos sponsors.

We also have a facebook photo gallery up, which seems somehow apropos since we were right next to the facebook both at SCALE.

I'm also pleased to report that a number of other Nexenta partners were present as well, showing off Nexenta based products. Next year, we hope they'll be back show casing technology based on illumos and NexentaStor 4.0.

Open Source Opportunities near Boston!

Its now fairly locked into stone that we will be opening an engineering office somewhere not far from Boston (probably just north of it) sometime during 1H2011.

As a result, we've started an aggressive recruiting campaign in the area. I am interested in talking to people with backgrounds in kernel software or device drivers -- especially if the background is on Solaris, but Linux and BSD backgrounds are fine too.

The culture here is startup, and while I'd love to find a few more architect-level candidates, I'm also keen to find folks just beginning their career with a high level of enthusiasm who are talented and driven to become the industry's next generation of storage and networking gurus.

Nexenta itself is still a small company, and so its still a great opportunity to get into the ground floor of what may well prove to be the fastest growing storage company ever. And even better, you can feel good knowing that your contributions will contribute to the greater good -- we are a company committed to Open Source and .. as our motto says, "Enterprise Storage for Everyone."

We'll also be hiring Quality Engineers in the same office, so if breaking stuff is more up your alley than building stuff, then there may also be a place for you.

If this sounds interesting to you, please let me know.

Note that we do not work with recruiters -- individual candidates only please.

illumos at SCALE

So, I've spent the past day or so here at the Hilton LAX with Albert, Roland, and Delya manning the illumos booth at SCALE. We're at booth #72. We've been handing out disks with OpenIndiana, Nexenta Core Platform (4.0 alpha release based on illumos), and NexentaStor 3.1 (alpha release) as well as the first ever illumos T-shirts for those folks who install one of these on their system (either physical or virtual.) I'll have photos to post soon -- sorry they're not ready yet.

The show has been amazing, and we've made a lot of new connections, both with other members of the open source community, and with new potential users and contributors as well as other potential collaborators.

If you're around tomorrow, please drop by and say hello!

(Oh yeah, and come watch Richard Elling and I mix it up with the BTRFS guys at the open source filesystems panel tomorrow!)

And if you're looking for an open source job, drop by and chat. We are hiring in a number of areas, and I'd love to have a chance to chat with candidates.

See you tomorrow!

New audio driver

I've just pushed

changeset:   13278:dabee83e3bb7
tag:         tip
user:        Garrett D'Amore 
date:        Mon Jan 31 17:40:15 2011 -0800
description:
    519 RFE audiocmihd
    Reviewed by: gwr@nexenta.com
    Reviewed by: dev@opensound.com
    Reviewed by: trisk@nexenta.com
    Reviewed by: ams@nexenta.com
    Approved by: trisk@nexenta.com

This represents the first significant contribution to illumos by a third party other than Nexenta, and is also the first hardware driver illumos has support for which Solaris does not. This is for ASUS Xonar cards.

You can tell you have a card that could benefit from this if prtconf -vp | grep pci13f6,8788 shows a result.

I expect this will be introduced soon into a forthcoming OpenIndiana build. Enjoy, and a big thanks again to 4Front Technologies for making this contribution!