Dam you DTrace!

Zone are OS virtualized guests. You can read more about them here.

Here are the basic commands you’ll need to find, list, install, delete and create a Zone.

Update image repository

imgadm update

View available images

imgadm avail

View install images

imgadm list

Import an image – the uuid is shown when listing available images

imgadm import %uuid%

Delete an image

imgadm destroy %uuid%

VM management

vmadm list
vmadm -f %filename%
vmadm delte
vmadm reboot
vmadm stop %uuid%
vmadm start %uuid%

Once you have your image(s) downloaded you need to create the template the image will use to configure the Zone. I’ve uploaded one that you can view below.

template.json

Your template will contain info that SmartOS will use to configure your Zone. Things like the HOSTNAME, IP, Gateway, disk & RAM size will be included in the file. The dataset_uuid is the uuid of the image you’ve downloaded to your host. It is important that you put in the correct uuid or the command will fail or you will create a Zone with the wrong image.

Create your Zone

vmadm install -f %your_template_name%.json

Once your Zone has finish building you can log into it. Do a vmadm list to see the uuid of your VMs.

zlogin %uuid%

You are logged in as root automatically. I’ve yet to decifer what the default root password is or how to change it. This page says the cmds within will change the root password, but, I’ve only been able to successfully change the admin password and that account is almost useless.

Here are some useful cmds when logged into a Zone.

Show the services on the box (enabled & disabled)

svcs -a

Service management cmds

svcadm enable %service_name%
svcadm disable %service_name%
svcadm restart %service_name%

Install packages

pkgin list
pkgin avail
pkgin update
pkgin install %package name%
pkgin upgrade
pkgin full-upgrade
pkgin remove %package name%

Log out of your Zone

logout

Next time I’ll tackle a KVM guest.

To begin, boot SmartOS from USB or CD. The OS will copy into memory and begin the “installation”. SmartOS runs from memory so there really isn’t much of an install. You only need to set your admin NIC, config it’s settings and choose the disk(s) you want to use for your zpool.

If you want striped mirrored zpools, install only on 1 disk. SmartOS will default to raidz. You can add additional disks to the pool after installation.

The SmartOS zpool is called zones.

Add a mirrored disk to your zpool.

zpool attach -f zones %original disk% %new disk%

zpool add zones mirrror %disk 3% %disk 4%

Add log and cache if you have it.

zpool add zones log mirror %log disk 15 %log disk 2%
zpool add zones cache %cache disk 1%
zpool add zones cache %cache disk 2%

Now that you are done configuring your disks, check out the zpool status

zpool status

Compression in zfs is pretty sweet, so you should turn it on.

zfs set compression=on zones

Check compression status on the zpool.

zfs get compression zones

Your Hostname will reset upon reboot. Use the xml below to set a static hostname. Make sure to change %YOUR_HOSTNAME% to the correct setting.

set-hostname.xml

Check to see what your current hostname is.

hostname

Here are some useful cmds that can be run to manage your system.

Use svcs to check the status of services.

svcs ssh

use svcadm to manage services.

svcadm restart %cmd%
svcadm refresh %cmd%
svcadm enable %cmd%
svcadm disable %cmd%

Shutdown (power off) & restart your server.

shutdown -y -g0 -i5
shutdown -y -g0 -i6

View your physical interfaces.

dladm show-phys -m

View your NIC settings.

ifconfig

Factory reset your install.

zfs set smartdc:factoryreset=yes zones/var

This info should get you setup with a working SmartOS server and ready to add virtualized guest via OS virtualization or KVM.

Next time I’ll detail creating your guest OSs.

You can find it at Advanced, Advanced Chipset Control and disable Active State Power Management in the BIOS.

Cheers to Lee Ticket for ending my frustrations.

Not wanting to give up the ability to run a few VMs at home I started looking for a way to get Nexenta direct access to my storage controller and gain all the benefits of zfs. While researching PCI pass-through I stumbled across SmartOS. SmartOS is built on illumos and offers zfs, DTrace, Zones & KVM. This looked like the perfect OS to use, but, to enable KVM I required a CPU with both Virtual Machine eXtensions (VMX) and Extended Page Tables. My CPU only has VMX. Time to find another option.

My preferred hypervisor is XenServer, but, it currently only offers GPU pass through. ESXi however does offer PCI pass through and a few blogs have detailed how they got Nexenta working on an ESXi box. My CPU will work with ESXi, so, it looks like this is the path to take.

It’s time to put together my existing and additional parts I received for this build.

• 2x Intel 60GB 330 SSD’s – L2ARC
• 2x Intel 20GB 313 SSD’s – ZIL
• 1x OCZ 60GB SSD – boot (had on hand)
• LSI 9211-8i HBA – Flashed to IT mode
• Icy Dock 6 Bay 2.5″ Backplane Cage – house all the SSDs
• Gigabyte EP45-UD3R (from existing build)
• Intel Core2 Quad Q8400 (from existing build)
• 16GB DDR2 (from existing build)
• 2x Intel 1GB NICs (had on hand)

The 1st issue I encountered was in booting with the LSI card installed. The UD3R kept trying to use the LSI card as a video card. Flashing to the latest UD3R BIOS cleared up that error.

Next the LSI card gave me this error:

warning 1 drives are reported bios memory allocation is full

My initial searches didn’t turn anything up. I eventually stumbled on this SuperMicro link, but, it didn’t clear up the issue. Next I installed the latest firmware & BIOS on the LSI. Again, this didn’t clear things up. Then I stumbled upon a Swedish forum post that did the trick.

Now I could finally install ESXi. During the setup I could see the drive hanging off the LSI and all the SSDs. Now we’re cooking with gas! Wrong, the vSphere Client won’t connect to ESXi. It keeps timing out and so far my searches aren’t turning up much. I’ve reinstalled a couple of times (of note: the ESXi install is WAY slower than XenServer) and done multiple SSH service restarts. I’m suspecting something in my hardware is unsupported by ESXi. Post in the comments if you know of a fix for this or know my setup isn’t supported.

I’ll continue searching for a fix, but, it might be time to upgrade my Mobo, CPU & RAM to something a little more recent and that can handle SmartOS. Stay tuned.