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  • ready to use and comfortable ZFS storage appliance for iSCSI/FC, NFS and SMB
  • Active Directory support with Snaps as Previous Version
  • user friendly Web-GUI that includes all functions for a sophisticated NAS or SAN appliance.
  • commercial use allowed
  • no capacity limit
  • free download for End-User


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  • Individual support and consulting
  • increased GUI performance/ background agents
  • bugfix/ updates/ access to bugfixes
  • extensions like comfortable ACL handling, disk and realtime monitoring or remote replication
  • appliance diskmap, security and tuning (Pro complete)
  • Redistribution/Bundling/setup on customers demand optional
please request a quotation.
Details: Featuresheet.pdf

napp-it-zfs

Setup you SAN/NAS: Mainboard/ Bios settings:

  • Set all onboard Sata ports to AHCI
  • disable Active State Power Management (SuperMicro, can cause problems)


Download OS (OmniOS or OpenIndiana)

  • Download bootable OS-ISO from OmniOS or OpenIndiana or optional the USB bootable installer
  • Burn a CD/DVD from the ISO and boot from the DVD


Plugin your Server into your network

  • Setup expects a DHCP server for automatic network configuration. You should have one for easy installation


Install OS (OmniOS or OpenIndiana live)

  • After booting from the Live DVD, you have a working OpenIndiana with a disk-installer on the desktop, Start it
  • Select the whole SATA boot disk for OS installation
    If you install to an USB stick, use a minimal distribution like OmniOS, disable atime and accept a slow Web-UI
  • Answer questions about your username, pw, country, keyboard and time zone, wait some minutes until installation is ready, reboot
  • optionally update OpenIndiana to newest (GUI: system-management - update manager )


Install napp-it/ setup your NAS ready to use

  • Boot OmniOS/OpenIndiana, login as regular user (not root). Open a Console from Main-Menu
    Enter su (to get full/root permissions)
    Enter the root PW from first setup (you must change this now to another final PW) and start napp-it online installer:
  • wget -O - www.napp-it.org/nappit | perl

    wait about 10 minutes. napp-it installs tools like smartmontools, netcat, mc or bonnie, downloads napp-it, configures your server for NAS use. Write down server ip. If you get errors, mostly you have no root permissions, no working network ot have type-errors (wget blank minusUpperO blank minus blank www.napp-it..)
  • After the installation is finished, you must reenter root PW (enter: passwd root)
    this will create an additional SMB password for root, you may use to connect from Windows
  • reboot


That is all, your NAS is ready to use. Login to the napp-it Web-UI

  • Open a browser from any other Computer and enter: http://serverip:81

  • optionally if you want to connect your server via putty or WinSCP as root:
    goto napp-it menu services-ssh and enable root access (care about security, disable when not needed)


OS crash/ bootdisk - failure

  • You have a ZFS boot disk. Every base OS or wget napp-it installation creates a bootable systemsnap where you can go back on power-on
  • if you have a serious bootdisk failure, buy a new boot disk, reinstall OpenIndiana and napp-it and import your DataPool. There is nothing important on your systemdisk beside napp-it job-settings, user or Comstar settings. They are easy to setup newly.
  • Care about redundancy of datapool. Do not care about controller. You can import ZFS Pools on any other ZFS system supporting this ZFS version with any disk controller. All of the important settings are stored in the Pool itself.
  • Think about a systemdisk-mirror to a second disk (napp-it menu disk - mirror rpool)


In case of (speed) problems:

  • -look at napp-it system - log and system statistics - (disk) (wait value of disks)
      a lot of waits indicates a disk problem, look also at cpu
  •  - try a local dd benchmark to check disk subsystem

  • on server side most problems are due to:
  • - badly supported mainboards (Use Intel server class mainboards, prefered SuperMicro)
  • - badly supported disc controller (Use LSI HBA ex LSI 9211/9300 and compatibles)
  • - hardware problems (mostly power, cabling, disc or controller related)
     look at startup-messages during boot (switch to console with tab-key on live editions)
  • - RAM problems, use ECC to get informed
  • - Nic problems (best: use Intel Nics only)
  • - Bios problem (update bios)
  • - active state powermanagement enabled (disable in bios)
  • - update OS to newest (maybee you problem is solved then)
  • - try more RAM
  • - disable dedup and compress 
  • - 4k disks (prefer 512 Byte ones)

  • on client side
  • - most problems are due to some Nics (mostly Realtek)
      update driver to newest (may help even when no problems with oher Windows servers, only with your ZFS NAS)
  • - compare another client, best with Intel Nics (mostly trouble free)
  • - check network, try to connect directly via crossover cable

  • other reasons/ solutions
  • - avoid copy tools like Teracopy etc. They may slow down speed with ZFS. Disable and compare to a basic copy
  • - Try a NAS test tool for sequential performance like http://www.808.dk/?code-csharp-nas-performance
  • - Prefer fast pool layouts like striped mirrors over slow ones with higher capacity like Raid-Z (1-3)
  • - check/replace your network cables (helps quite often) and network switches/ try to connect directly via crossover cable

  • slow sync writes
  • - With slow writes especially on ESXi/NFS, disable sync-property and recheck performance.
      If values are much better, add a ZIL SSD and re-enable sync.

napp-it 27.12.2023