From owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Aug 18 14:46:18 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: fs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CCF1716A418 for ; Sat, 18 Aug 2007 14:46:18 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [209.31.154.42]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7E82813C458 for ; Sat, 18 Aug 2007 14:46:18 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [209.31.154.41]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 64373494B3; Sat, 18 Aug 2007 10:46:17 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 15:46:17 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Watson X-X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: "Derek E. Lewis" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20070818154250.V27632@fledge.watson.org> References: <46B0F505.8090102@freebsdbrasil.com.br> <20070818125647.O84677@fledge.watson.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: Patrick Tracanelli , fs@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Xsan (Apple) on FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Filesystems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 14:46:18 -0000 On Sat, 18 Aug 2007, Derek E. Lewis wrote: > On Sat, 18 Aug 2007, Robert Watson wrote: > >> Catching up on an aging thread here -- as far as I know, the XSan parts >> from Mac OS X are closed source, so while you can access XSan storage using >> whatever distributed file systems Apple supports (NFS, CIFS?), you can't >> use FreeBSD to directly access the storage area network. This is probably >> fine. >> >> You'll be interested to know, if you don't already, that both NetApp and >> Isilon use FreeBSD as the foundation OS for their products. > > Isilon uses FreeBSD, yes, but Netapp uses Linux. One of the improvements > Netapp made to Linux was rewriting the NFS stack to support NFSv4 in a > decent manner. Those of you that have worked with Linux NFS before know that > its not something you want to ship on a commercial storage product. NetApp gave a rather nice presentation at the recent FreeBSD developer summit in Ottawa on the topic of FreeBSD as the foundation OS for OnTap/GX, and also made a rather healthy donation to the FreeBSD Foundation in the last six months. I defer to their expertise on the point of what the OS in their product is... :-) As I understand it, NetApp has improved the Linux NFS client significantly, but not for the purposes of including it in their product. Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge