Report: Sun Open Storage

[Mark Schouten]

On Wed, 2008-11-19 at 13:57 +1030, Karl Goetz wrote:
> > 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 :)

As far as I know, it's meant to be useful. But really, if you want to
see how it works: http://www.sun.com/tryandbuy/applyonline.jsp

I'm sure it will end up there. :)

> > 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? ;)

IIRC This was allready on the nice-to-have list.
 
> > > 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.

Like I said, they've added proprietary stuff. It's not all open, but
it's not all closed. The (technical) features of the box are Open, the
easy-administration stuff isn't.

> > 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).

I'm not sure if I should take this seriously. :)

-- 
Mark Schouten <mark at prevented.net>