OpenMediaVault 0.6 Where are we going !

Cpoc · 28. November 2013

I am writing this thread because I would like to give my thoughts on OpenMediaVaults future. I have been personally using OMV since 0.2 and I love it. Its easy to use and you can add features via official plugins, third party plugins and scripts. However I'm quite disapointed that OMV has gotten little to no press and exposure. Its one of the most open source stable NAS systems out there. I know because I have tried them all. Its based on stable Debian so adding programs is pretty straight forward.

The only problem is most of the dev work is done by 1 man. We need to get more devs on board which means more exposure for OMV. I have a few ideas and its up to Volker to decide to use them or not.

Fisrt of all I think for version 0.6 and forward we should drop 32 bit support and only use 64 bit. Now when OMV was first released for vesion 0.2 I wanted 32 bit support as Volker and others wanted 64 bit support only. That was then this is now. We are almost at 2014 and its time for 32 bit support to go. You can pick up a socket 771 board for like $20.00 on ebay and even the 771 systems all support 64 bit. If you are still running 32 bit only then its time to upgrade.

I beleive OMV should support ZFS. Now I know that Volker said that ZFS would not be supported and BTRFS would be used instead but I think this needs to be changed. As for myself I will be using hardware raid so ZFS is out for me but there are allot of users that would switch to OMV if it had ZFS support. Installing ZFS backend is very easy because of a project called ZFS on Linux and installing it is also very easy, http://zfsonlinux.org/debian.html
BTRFS is not ready for production in fact not even all the features are implemented. Also BTRFS is very dependent on the Linux kernel so an older kernel will not have all the new features of BTRFS and bugfixed. ZFS on Linux as of 0.6.1 is production ready and works really well from what I have read its now at version 0.6.2. All it needs is the gui interface for OMV. When BTRFS is ready for production I beleive it will be the default file system for Linux but it is far from there yet. By offering ZFS on OMV it wil bring many new users and hopfully a few devs as well. There are lots of users that want to use ZFS but want Linux as its OS and not one of the BSD OS's

Any thoughts feedback

tomekk · 28. November 2013

I agree with Cpoc. Official ZFS support for OMV will be a great PR stunt and will attract many people towards OMV, including devs.

ryecoaaron · 28. November 2013

A ZFS plugin is being worked on. btrfs will be in 0.6 just because OMV will be based on wheezy. I do agree that 32 bit is probably not needed anymore. While the dev work is done by one man, he set it up the right way with a good foundation. Any more enhancements can be added by plugin and there are at least three of us doing quite a bit of work with plugins. I know I have looked to see what other commercial NAS systems have for options/plugins and we are trying to add the good ones.

Cpoc · 28. November 2013

What really gets me is how little info/press that OMV gets. Just do a Google search for openmediavault review and you will see reviews that say OMV cant't be used by installers even though Volker changed the licence to GPL3 but there is no update on the review to reflect the change. You have another review that says Open filler is a much better than OMV when open filler is pretty much dead and is riddled with bugs, I know because I have used it and it does not even come close to OMV. With bad press like that no wonder why we have such little dev support. Its amazing that you think how stable OMV is with 1 main dev and 3 plugin devs. I mean I have zero issues with OMV and when there is an issues its fixed in days not weeks or months. We need to get the word out at least by fully supporting ZFS via plugin OMV would start to get some needed attention.

OMV would be the only NAS that would have the most choices. From LVM to MDADM raid to BTRFS and ZFS. The bad press and reviews need to stop. OMV can hold its ground and then some just that people don't know about it.

ryecoaaron · 28. November 2013

I looked for years trying everything out there before finding the perfect NAS. I have found it now I agree that zfs will help although I don't think most users need it. I think snapraid will fill the need to use different size drives (like unraid). Once OMV is based on wheezy, the hardware support and multimedia software support should be where it needs to be. Then it should really get some attention

votdev · 28. November 2013

Dropping 32bit support sounds got because this means less work for creating the ISO images, for the core system code there is no difference between 32/64 bit because OMV only uses script languages that are platform independent. I think we can start with 64bit only for OMV 0.6, but if 32bit is still needed we can release this later.

I think we should enhance the core system to be able to add features like ZFS via plugin, without the need to touch the core engine. The first step is done by the new storage backend implementation which introduces a abstraction layer between the core engine and the storage backends. With the use of the OMV PHP storage backend implementation it should be easy to add additional storage backends like ZFS or BTRFS.

subzeroin · 29. November 2013

Since the later kernels (>=3.8) have support for btrfs RAID5/6, do you think there will be hard to implement support for that too?

tekkb · 29. November 2013

I think you should take into account some stats before you cutoff so many 32 bit users. I disagree, I think we should continue with 32 bit isos.

32 bit = 38.28% of .5 downloads

64 bit = 61.72% of .5 downloads

Cpoc · 29. November 2013

I agree with Volker that we should drop 32 bit for 0.6 and see how that goes. I mean who is still running 32 bit systems for servers. As for ZFS it should not be in the core but offered as a plugin. I won't be using ZFS but I'm sure that many will. The same with BTRFS should also be done via plugin. This way the core system is kept small and all addons to be added via plugin or script.

ryecoaaron · 29. November 2013

That is a lot more than I thought. I bet a lot of downloads are from Intel users downloading the 386 image because they think the amd64 image is for amd processors only. But I suppose some be running older atom or xeon systems. The biggest reason to switch to omv 0.6 is for the wheezy support. Anyone who can't run amd64 doesn't need wheezy support.

Cpoc · 29. November 2013

Yes I see that all the time. They see AMD64 and they think its for AMD CPU's only. Sine i386 has PAE it works fine with more than 4 gigs of ram. The first time I saw that I thought the same. Its just called that because AMD came up with 64 bit extension before Intel did.

davidh2k · 29. November 2013

Zitat von "ryecoaaron"

That is a lot more than I thought. I bet a lot of downloads are from Intel users downloading the 386 image because they think the amd64 image is for amd processors only. But I suppose some be running older atom or xeon systems. The biggest reason to switch to omv 0.6 is for the wheezy support. Anyone who can't run amd64 doesn't need wheezy support.

Exactly... :roll:

Greetings
David

davidh2k · 29. November 2013

Zitat von "Cpoc"

Yes I see that all the time. They see AMD64 and they think its for AMD CPU's only. Sine i386 has PAE it works fine with more than 4 gigs of ram. The first time I saw that I thought the same. Its just called that because AMD came up with 64 bit extension before Intel did.

Its called that way because INTEL uses the AMD64 implementation. They were way off with theire own 64bit implementation so they bought from AMD.

Greetings
David

Cpoc · 30. November 2013

I looked at Snapraid and its amazing. It can do what ZFS can do but with up to 6 parity drives and what's really amazing is that it supports different size drives. Even unraid can't do that. If we can get a GUI plugin as well it would make OMV the best open sourced platform out there. I believe Volker should make that back end which allows all of these plugins to work. More choices = more users, more users = more devs which equals more donations.

Cpoc · 30. November 2013

My bad looks like a GUI has already been released for snap raid and its in beta. Since I'm still on 0.4 I did not see it listed.

ryecoaaron · 30. November 2013

The plugin is still pretty manual but we are working on it. I will be switching to it soon I am also working on an aufs plugin to make all the separate drives in snapraid appear as one (read and write).

Cpoc · 30. November 2013

Sweet that will be nice. I can use one of my SAS expanders with my mixed drives. It seems a waste not to be using them now. All mixed sizes so raid is out. Now I can use them as another backup system.

Cpoc · 30. November 2013

So the new plugin will be something like LVM on raid. You got a bunch of mixed drives but the plugin makes them look like one big drive with all the parity drives included.

ryecoaaron · 30. November 2013

aufs creates another mount point which is a pool of the drives. You can write to the individual drives or to the pooled mount point. So i think it is better than lvm.

k567890 · 1. Dezember 2013

omv without zfs is almost a deal breaker for me to be honest. This is a must for NAS. No encryption == FAIL.

Instead of wasting time on other things, you should focus on zfs.

PROS
-It is the best files system.
-It has top-notch raid.
-It has encryption.
-It has data integrity features that no-other raid does.
-It is dirt easy...and I mean !EXTREMELY! easy to use with FreeNAS.

CONS
-Some left-wing die-hard communists don't like it because it is not a member of the party. These are the same people that restricted Linux to a 1% market share due to their bs. You have to choose between making the left-wing extremists happy vs. making your users happy.

A NAS without zfs is an amateur NAS at best. No offense, just my opinion.

There is no need for 32bit. I downloaded a 32bit copy when i first tried it in a vm because I tried it on an old 64bit pc with 32bit xp host. No one has a 32bit pc anymore.

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