migrating from Solaris to OpenZFS on OSX

[abruzzi]

OMG, that installation looks horrendous. I was thinking of doing it, mainly for fun, but I hadn't seen the details. Now that I know, I'd rather install a SATA drive in my left kidney than in the optical bay of an old Mac Pro.

I did it once before when upgraded the CPUs, and yeah, I still have PTSD from the process. However if you have no PCIe cards you can just see the ports. I don't think it would be too hard (if you're dexterous) to plug the cables by touch. In a few weeks I'll let you know how hard it was. (assuming I get everything together.)

I guess the one question that I'd still like to hear back on is nothing to do with the eSATA/USB3/enclosure questions, but simply will the Solaris managed ZFS drives be recognized and mounted without any problemson OSX? Both because of the jump from Solaris to OSX, and also because of the likelihood that solaris has an older ZFS?

[Brendon]

The answer is possibly/probably! What zpool version is Solaris using? Not aware of anyone that has migrated from that configuration.

Brendon

[xenophon]

External eSATA hooked up to an ASM1061-based PCI card is, in my opinion, the way to go (for an OSX-based setup serving OpenZFS datasets).

PCI cards (actually mini-PCIe) are usually cheap and port-multiplier-aware: the archaic Silicon Image 3132 chip-based cards require a driver (was recently updated by Sonnet, for their E2P cards, and works on OS X Sierra), while the ASM1061-based ones work OOB. Of course, one can go to the more expensive RAID cards, but I see no need for that.

Check out -

Sonnet Tempo SATA Pro 6Gb PCIe 2.0
DeLock PCIe > 2 x Multiport USB 3.0 + eSatap

The DeLock is widely available in Europe (unlike the Sonnet).

Anyway, I've been using these for years, and the 5-bay enclosures (Sharkoon in my case) are very reliable. The host machines are three mid-range hackintoshes and the whole setup works beautifully. Backups are done by ChronoSync rsync daemons. Even a DICOM PACS server resides on OpenZFS volumes.

Couldn't be happier. If you have time to kill, you can check out my tribulations with ZFS and eSATA at: https://lycabettus.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/siliconimage3132-based-esata-mini-pci-cards-and-os-x-10-8-mountain-lion/?iframe=true&theme_preview=true.

In essence, a vintage MacPro is a very adeaquate platform for eSATA-based external storage. My feelings about thunderbolt echo Brendon's.

With greetings from Athens,

Xen