Stefano Marinelli on Nostr: Lately, I've been very busy, both with work and personal matters. However, I did ...
Lately, I've been very busy, both with work and personal matters. However, I did manage to do a series of experiments and tests with OmniOS, and I admit that for some workloads, it has definitely convinced me. Not to replace FreeBSD, but to complement it. Some advantages:
- The ability to run both KVM and bhyve VMs is a big advantage because, in some cases, I need to run VMs on KVM (some technicians know it and prefer it).
- By giving dedicated zones, I can assign one to each user who needs to manage their VM. This can also be done on FreeBSD by using bhyve in jails. I’ve tried it, and it works well.
- The LX zones (Linux) are more compatible compared to FreeBSD zones with the Linuxulator. Systemd works, and the zone limits are correctly reported by Linux commands such as free, etc. Sometimes, I need to give users Linux VMs, and I must use bhyve because the non-functioning systemd and incorrectly displayed limits (it always reports total RAM, not the one limited to the jail) are blocking. In this way, I can avoid double-caching, double kernel, etc.
- Some people, when they hear Illumos, think I’m talking about a new type of lamps. When I talk about *BSD, they think I’m talking about "nerdy" stuff. But as soon as I mention Solaris, their eyes widen because, in their imagination, it represents stability and security par excellence. So welcome OmniOS!
However, I have a series of issues that are limiting my testing/deployment:
1) No problem on Hetzner physical hosts – both in ipv4 and ipv6. I just need to configure the global zone with a /72 IP (instead of /64) and assign another /72 to the interface that will be assigned to the zones, enabling routing. It works; Hetzner accepts this routed setup, a dynamic I have already encountered and tested successfully on FreeBSD.
2) Hetzner VPS "cloud" servers: The Virtio-SCSI supported by Illumos is 1af4:1004, while the Virtio SCSI controller at Hetzner is: Red Hat, Inc. Virtio 1.0 SCSI [1af4:1048] (rev 01). This means that OmniOS VMs cannot boot. I reported this in the OmniOS IRC channel, and they confirmed the incompatibility. It shouldn’t be hard to adapt/create the driver, but personally, I am not able to, so I’m stuck.
3) It runs well on Netcup, and everything works fine in ipv4, but I am encountering issues (the same ones I had with FreeBSD) with ipv6. It seems that Netcup doesn’t like that type of routing, so I have to assign ipv6 to the main interface, using shared routing. It doesn’t make me jump for joy. Also, in this case, there seem to be problems (no issues from the global zone, but from other zones, I can ping Google, but there are reachability issues with other hosts. I am investigating; I remember having the same issue on FreeBSD, but I don’t remember if/how I solved it).
The experiments will continue in the coming days.
#Illumos #OmniOS #FreeBSD #Hetzner #Netcup #ipv6 #Networking #IT #SysAdmin
- The ability to run both KVM and bhyve VMs is a big advantage because, in some cases, I need to run VMs on KVM (some technicians know it and prefer it).
- By giving dedicated zones, I can assign one to each user who needs to manage their VM. This can also be done on FreeBSD by using bhyve in jails. I’ve tried it, and it works well.
- The LX zones (Linux) are more compatible compared to FreeBSD zones with the Linuxulator. Systemd works, and the zone limits are correctly reported by Linux commands such as free, etc. Sometimes, I need to give users Linux VMs, and I must use bhyve because the non-functioning systemd and incorrectly displayed limits (it always reports total RAM, not the one limited to the jail) are blocking. In this way, I can avoid double-caching, double kernel, etc.
- Some people, when they hear Illumos, think I’m talking about a new type of lamps. When I talk about *BSD, they think I’m talking about "nerdy" stuff. But as soon as I mention Solaris, their eyes widen because, in their imagination, it represents stability and security par excellence. So welcome OmniOS!
However, I have a series of issues that are limiting my testing/deployment:
1) No problem on Hetzner physical hosts – both in ipv4 and ipv6. I just need to configure the global zone with a /72 IP (instead of /64) and assign another /72 to the interface that will be assigned to the zones, enabling routing. It works; Hetzner accepts this routed setup, a dynamic I have already encountered and tested successfully on FreeBSD.
2) Hetzner VPS "cloud" servers: The Virtio-SCSI supported by Illumos is 1af4:1004, while the Virtio SCSI controller at Hetzner is: Red Hat, Inc. Virtio 1.0 SCSI [1af4:1048] (rev 01). This means that OmniOS VMs cannot boot. I reported this in the OmniOS IRC channel, and they confirmed the incompatibility. It shouldn’t be hard to adapt/create the driver, but personally, I am not able to, so I’m stuck.
3) It runs well on Netcup, and everything works fine in ipv4, but I am encountering issues (the same ones I had with FreeBSD) with ipv6. It seems that Netcup doesn’t like that type of routing, so I have to assign ipv6 to the main interface, using shared routing. It doesn’t make me jump for joy. Also, in this case, there seem to be problems (no issues from the global zone, but from other zones, I can ping Google, but there are reachability issues with other hosts. I am investigating; I remember having the same issue on FreeBSD, but I don’t remember if/how I solved it).
The experiments will continue in the coming days.
#Illumos #OmniOS #FreeBSD #Hetzner #Netcup #ipv6 #Networking #IT #SysAdmin