23 ms·

Yes, by inheriting the OpenSolaris legacy, illumos was essentially born in production, having been used in production very nearly since its inception. We at Jo

Yes, by inheriting the OpenSolaris legacy, illumos was essentially born in production, having been used in production very nearly since its inception. We at Joyent have our own illumos-derivative, SmartOS[1], that is the foundation of our own public cloud -- and of our (open source) orchestration software, SmartDataCenter[2] and of our object storage system, Manta[3]. OmniTI has OmniOS[4] which they (and others) have deployed extensively into production. Delphix (the origin of this post) has DelphixOS[5] which forms the basis of their data management virtual appliances, also widely deployed in production. Finally, if you're interested in the (complicated) history of the system, you might be interested in a talk that I gave a few years ago[6] that is somewhat infamous for its candor. ;) [1] http://smartos.org http://smartos.org [2] https://github.com/joyent/sdc/ https://github.com/joyent/sdc/ [3] https://github.com/joyent/manta https://github.com/joyent/manta [4] http://omnios.omniti.com/ http://omnios.omniti.com/ [5] https://github.com/delphix/delphix-os https://github.com/delphix/delphix-os [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc

ebiester 12y ago
Is there a good link to the differences between SmartOS and illumos? Why does the fork exist?
- bcantrill 12y ago
  SmartOS (like OmniOS, DelphixOS and the others) isn't a fork -- we're a downstream repo that merges from upstream on a daily basis, and regularly upstreams our own work. This model has been very successful for illumos (in my opinion) because it has allowed for a broad degree of experimentation in production-oriented systems while still having a conduit for getting successful experiments upstream. And by the time we go to upstream something, it's generally been running in production for us for a while (and ditto other downstream repos), giving reviewers confidence and allowing us to maintain very, very high quality in illumos itself. (Prakash alluded to this in the linked blog post, and it's absolutely essential to assure that downstream repos can frequently merge.) The net is that we have found the work going into illumos to be exactly what you want upon integration: innovative, pragmatic work that has already proven itself in production.
- takeda 12y ago
  As I understand SmartOS was designated to be a host for VMs, for that reason Joyent ported KVM to Solaris and made it so it can be booted from USB drive. So for example updating system is as simple as loading new version on USB drive and rebooting the system.

ebiester 12y ago

Is there a good link to the differences between SmartOS and illumos? Why does the fork exist?

bcantrill 12y ago
SmartOS (like OmniOS, DelphixOS and the others) isn't a fork -- we're a downstream repo that merges from upstream on a daily basis, and regularly upstreams our own work. This model has been very successful for illumos (in my opinion) because it has allowed for a broad degree of experimentation in production-oriented systems while still having a conduit for getting successful experiments upstream. And by the time we go to upstream something, it's generally been running in production for us for a while (and ditto other downstream repos), giving reviewers confidence and allowing us to maintain very, very high quality in illumos itself. (Prakash alluded to this in the linked blog post, and it's absolutely essential to assure that downstream repos can frequently merge.) The net is that we have found the work going into illumos to be exactly what you want upon integration: innovative, pragmatic work that has already proven itself in production.
takeda 12y ago
As I understand SmartOS was designated to be a host for VMs, for that reason Joyent ported KVM to Solaris and made it so it can be booted from USB drive. So for example updating system is as simple as loading new version on USB drive and rebooting the system.