Is there any plan to release ixsystem built SCALE nodes?

[inman.turbo]

I for one would be interested in purchasing SCALE nodes built on ix hardware. Is there any plan to do that? I understand SCALE will remain open source and that's wonderful, however there's no reason why ixsystems can't offer a ready to go node, representing the ideal combination of hardware and software for scale.

The fantastic thing about this is that as your needs grow, you can just buy (or build -- depending on your support and/or budgetary needs!) another server and add it to the cluster, possibly even preconfigured by ixsystems to work in your cluster!

I can even imagine a model which tracks load and generates an alert suggesting a node addition when a certain target is hit.

Anyhoo I haven't seen a roadmap for anything like this, so I thought I would open a thread where we could discuss it and express our interest.

I could easily picture our datacenter running on nothing but ixsystems under this paradigm, provided that ixsystems proves to be as adept with compute as they are with storage.

Our operational cost tends to be much higher than hardware cost (of course), and hardware purchases tend to lead to more operational cost.

Hardware purchases which could reduce operational costs would be ideal, as we could then divert some of those engineering cycles from operations into more QA, product development, and product management. Just my thoughts.

 

[ornias]

SCALE should (eventually) be compatible with most (all?) current IX hardware.
They are working on things like the HA part of the TrueNAS hardware, so that's a pretty clear signal said hardware will be supported (eventually).


Worst case you would need to select a different train after first boot.
When it comes to free vs enterprise licences on SCALE: I know IX has some ideas about it, but there isn't anything definitive that I know of yet.

 

[inman.turbo]

I hadn't thought about it as just being another train, since it is based on an entirely different operating system. I would be interesting to see how that might work. Obviously with openzfs the pools should work across these trains, but what about network configurations, plugins, etc.? That would be a dangerous option to have in the trains dropdown!

Also scripted installation of debian from a running freebsd system automatically with a single reboot is a lot different from the typical train switch, and may be difficult to achieve with stable and predictable results. On first boot maybe, or perhaps in an installation menu?

 

[morganL]

Plan is that TrueNAS 12.0-U2 will have a migration option to SCALE. It won't include plugins and jails.

 

[inman.turbo]

Plan is that TrueNAS 12.0-U2 will have a migration option to SCALE. It won't include plugins and jails.

Well that's very interesting indeed. What I'm wondering about is something compiled and optimized with specific hardware in mind, and perhaps a cluster support model with an exportable join config or something of that nature to attache to a ticket to request another node from ixsystems.

 

[HoneyBadger]

I for one would be interested in purchasing SCALE nodes built on ix hardware. Is there any plan to do that?

Have you looked at the TrueNAS R-series? It's offered with all three tiers (CORE, Enterprise, SCALE) although the release schedule for SCALE doesn't have it hitting full RELEASE quality until Q2 2021.

TrueNAS R-Series with OpenZFS & Scale-Up & Scale-Out Storage

The TrueNAS R-Series combines the powerful features of OpenZFS with budget-friendly, single controller hardware for scale-out storage.

www.truenas.com

 

[morganL]

Well that's very interesting indeed. What I'm wondering about is something compiled and optimized with specific hardware in mind, and perhaps a cluster support model with an exportable join config or something of that nature to attache to a ticket to request another node from ixsystems.

Yes, we'll be able to provide nodes with TrueNAS SCALE preinstalled and with enterprise-grade support... that's what we do! Single nodes in Q1, multiple node clusters in Q2.

 

[Herr_Merlin]

with specs ranging from 10 GbE to 100 GbE and up to 16 cores and 192 GB of RAM

That seems pretty low end for SCALE.. as if I got it correctly can run as HCI solution..

 

[morganL]

That seems pretty low end for SCALE.. as if I got it correctly can run as HCI solution..

Compute nodes with higher end CPUs and more RAM can/will be made available. TrueNAS SCALE can run on an x86 server.

 

[HoneyBadger]

That seems pretty low end for SCALE.. as if I got it correctly can run as HCI solution..

R-series might be positioned as "storage first, light compute" - maybe not where you run your heavy CPU VMs but just a place to put lighter workloads closer to the storage.

 

[Herr_Merlin]

Compute nodes with higher end CPUs and more RAM can/will be made available. TrueNAS SCALE can run on an x86 server.

With dedicated compute and storage nodes we are back to the classical design and not really HCI.. at least if compare that with other vendors HCI solutions.
Yes I know it can run on any hardware.
Was just asking about the hardware Xi sells

 

[morganL]

With dedicated compute and storage nodes we are back to the classical design and not really HCI.. at least if compare that with other vendors HCI solutions.
Yes I know it can run on any hardware.
Was just asking about the hardware Xi sells

We sell any hardware config and build custom servers. We'll release more standard TrueNAS appliances which will include higher density compute (and storage) in future, but our intention is that any existing compute node can run SCALE.