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Joyent's value proposition was killed (for the most part) by the experience of using their public interface. It would've taken a great deal of bravery to try th
by RantyDave 7y ago
Joyent's value proposition was killed (for the most part) by the experience of using their public interface. It would've taken a great deal of bravery to try that and decide a local install would be better. The node thing also did a lot of damage - Joyent wrote a lot of the SmartOS/Triton command line tools in node so they were slow as hell. Triton itself is a very non-trivial install although quite probably less so than a complete k8s rig.
There are also some really subtle Linux compatibility problems. For instance: IIRC a SmartOS malloc will not fail. Ever. But it might not return either. There's a really complicated mark/sweep type virtual memory thing and the documentation is good, for the nasty node stuff, and kinda terrible otherwise.
Finally, and with no lack of irony, you just can't run SmartOS on the cloud. For a start it needs to do its first boot off a CD and subsequent boots off a USB drive-type-arrangement. The hard part is that most cloud providers run a butchered Linux kernel and not a fully generalised VM - and on vultr at least, while they run a proper VM, for some reason the processors don't "come up".
I've not looked at all this stuff for at least a year so it may have changed. Either which way I believe the majority of the community is now on OmniOS - which I always got on better with anyway.
- jen20 7y ago> Triton itself is a very non-trivial install Actually I'd say the Triton install is not only trivial, but should be a model for other similar systems. During my testing with Intel NUCs, I had a usable system deploying containers in under 20 minutes. Most managed Kubernetes systems cannot even provision in that time frame. > you just can't run SmartOS on the cloud. The installer may lead you to the USB and install path, but it is not necessary. I built Vagrant boxes that had SmartOS on a regular disk, and I believe that more recently SmartOS has been running well in GCP. There is no reason it could not run in AWS or Azure, either.
- merb 7y ago> Most managed Kubernetes systems cannot even provision in that time frame. when was the last time you used k8s?! I mean as of now there is even the expirmental k3os which boots a fully fledged k8s in seconds. you can even built a cluster with it. sadly HA backplane is still not available since k3s is still early in its development.
- jen20 7y agoI'm talking here about the managed Kubernetes offerings from AWS and Azure. As for when I last used them: waiting for provisioning right now (18 mins and counting) is affording me the time to comment on this article.
- Annatar 7y agoHow long did it take you to install Triton? How many systems did you need to install Triton? How much memory did(do) the individual systems running Triton have? Which documentation did you follow to install Triton?
- Annatar 7y ago"For a start it needs to do its first boot off a CD and subsequent boots off a USB drive-type-arrangement." No it does not. I boot my SmartOS instances with PXE, DHCP and TFTP from the network. Served by a Solaris 10 intel server, no less. No CD's or USB images anywhere in sight. In fact, I came up with a trifecta scheme where three SmartOS servers will all run TFTP and DHCP servers, thus being able to boot each other and all the other SmartOS servers over the network. In the event where all three would lose power simultaneously, THEN I reach for a USB stick with the emergency boot image. And I'll have two of those. But barring such catastrophic loss of power simultaneously, there won't be any CD's or USB sticks needed. The network is the computer.
- RantyDave 7y agoSo not on AWS, then? Hence "on the cloud", I never said it was impossible in your garage.
- Annatar 7y agoAWS? I'm not a loser, I design my own 19" rack mountable servers, modify and compile my own version of SmartOS, do you really think I'd be so dumb and naive as to entrust my business to some corporation? HELL NO!!! How could you even think that, what would give you such a preposterous idea!?! And it gives me immense pleasure to be able to state that not even Digital Ocean can beat my running and maintenance costs, especially long term. All these "cloud" providers are for people who aren't capable of designing and running their own data centers cost effectively, either because they are too lazy (I condemn them for that), or because they have clueless management (time to change companies), or because they couldn't figure out how to be full stack system engineers, from hardware through system administration all the way to architecture (for which I again mercilessly and with prejudice condemn them). If in that business one cannot do it quickly and cost effectively on-premise... one is the wrong person for the job. Truth be told, there are few of us left alive now who can, but that's all the more reason to master the old arts.