Intruducing OpenFiler

. Wednesday, November 25, 2009
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Hey Guys,
Wow, I didn’t post anything new since August – Damn - I’m lazy :-)
I already mentioned FreeNas/OpenFiler software in some older my posts about low-cost DIY NAS boxes, but I guess its about time I try it myself in real environment.
Long story short, our IT director has decided to migrate all servers to the blade system, so this left us with spare regular “old-school” servers, most of them ProLiant DL360 and DL380.
One particular one –DL380 G3 which used to be company’s central SQL, now was standing idle for a few months or so, but now the time has come for the big – REPURPOSE !!
The original plan was to install Windows 2008 server, but after half-day spent I gave up on this idea. Lack: DVD drive, 64bit support, and no official drivers support was the final nail in the coffin (I did manage to initiate install from pre-existing 2003, but past-install OS never could complete the boot)
Going back to the 2003 server just seemed way to plain vanilla boring.
I said to my boss – Let us try OpenFiler – and he said – fire away !!
Today and later on I’d like to share some of my experiences and discoveries thru this mini-project from standpoint of mostly windows systems admin. Yea – I support ESX and Netapp – but most of command line changes are done by vendor’s support stuff :)
I promise to post soon about the install process.