Omnios install to USB stick or SD card

solaris

I am building out a NAS and wanted to try using a Solaris derivative instead of FreeBSD for my ZFS shares. My other NAS devices have FreeNAS installed onto a USB stick, which is nice because it leaves all the data drives available for storage.

I've read conflicting stories about installing other Solaris derivatives onto a flash drive. It appears the "minimal" install is pretty large, and the OS continues to use the install drive for some kind of cache/swap state, which dramatically reduces the expected lifespan of the stick. OmniOS seems to be a lot more oriented to the embedded crowd though.

With FreeNAS, the OS takes an entire disk so the USB/SD drive is most practical. Is that the case with OmniOS? Or can I just have a 32G partition on my data disks for the OS and use the rest of the disk for storage?

Thanks

Best Answer

For this case is SmartOS better choice. It is Solais derivate, that runs completely from USB stick and local disks zpool just store your data, nothing from OS. Upgrades are way you just copy new image to USB stick. SmartOS is primary a hypervisor, but all other features are there too + relatively fresh prebuilt packages repo available.

>SmartOS<

Btw when you want full featured storage appliance and no problem for you to install appliance SW on disks, then NexentaStor is definitely your choice. Comparable with FreeNAS... but much more features. You can even make fiber channel storage device from your old PC... just click out on web GUI.

>NexentaStor<

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