Re: NetBSD in production

[Stephan <stephanwib%googlemail.com@localhost>]

Replying to myself:

-what kind of application/service

->A machine which mounts different sources via NFS and SSHFS and
exports them to different networks via Samba. This is also a file
repository and login server. (x86 with 2 local SCSI disks mirrored
with raidframe).

->For a specific project: A NetBSD 5 Xen-Server with some NetBSD 5
guests for an evaluation of different web applications (mostly
apache+php). I used a bozohttp web server as the installation source
for sets and packages. This machine also hosted the Java based
etherpad application for collaborative work.

->I tested another NetBSD 5 Xen-Server for virtualisation of Windows
Server 2003. This works but LVM or ZFS is still missing for snapshots.
At the moment I´m still using OpenSolaris for that task.

-what platform (type, configuration)

Only x86 32 Bit (1 - 4 CPUs).

-what branch

5.1 stable

-what critically

Not mission critical, but nedded for my work.

-what version(s) of NetBSD

Only the latest stable release.

-what pros do you see

Sophisticated engineering (e.g. kevent, property lists, kauth)
Stability
Performance gets better and better

-what is missing / could be improved

There is naturally always a lot one could do:

Some drivers are not at their best (e.g. RAID controllers or FC HBAs)
FC and IP multipathing (FC is completely missing AFAIK, IP doesn´t
alsways work (agr))
Service Management (I´m currently investigating this)
sysinst could be pimped to be a modular management console for
administrative tasks
Interoperability between binary programs (this is completely missing
on all Unixes)
An option to install an out-of-the-box Xen Server. The installation
sequece is way too complex ATM.
RBAC (I think someone is working on this)
A GUI would be cool

Regards,

Stephan