These days i was invited to do a presentation about Open Storage and ZFS on two Oracle/Sun events here in Brazil. One in Rio de Janeiro, and another here at São Paulo. Well, it was very interesting, first because i did live in Rio de Janeiro (1998/1999), and is a very, very beautiful place! I could be at Copacabana on the Reveillon. That was my first time back, and was a really good feeling the first step (again) on that wonderful city.
Second, i could see some old friends from Sun on both events, and talk a lot about many things. And yes, i did talk a lot about all we have doubts in the OpenSolaris community, and this whole cloud we have above us. Obviously, no answers. But, anyway… is good to talk with somebody from inside.
I’m not participating in the discussions on opensolaris.org, because i’m tired to be ignored. I’m not posting, but i’m reading, and i did see disrespect and other people being ignored. We can see many developers that were not talking sometime ago, and i think was because they simply do not like Open Source. And now, seems like they are smiling, and pretty active on the mailing lists. Well, i’m the guy from outside, they work for Oracle/Sun, they build the software. That’s ok for me. I will not try to make part of something i’m not welcome. If Oracle/Sun just want users, it’s easier for everyone.

Oracle Open Storage Forum 2010

That said, on my presentation i did talk as a client. And that is some point i think some people at Oracle are not thinking about. We have Pettabytes of storage on ZFS. Probably the largest OpenSolaris/ZFS installation in Latin America. We have 7410 storages here, and that is not because some vendor came here and did “sell” it to us. We do use OpenSolaris/ZFS because we know ZFS, and because we use the hybrid storage model of ZFS before the 7410 Oracle/SUN product. We are an example of the voluntary marketing, and i was there talking about the beauty of OpenSolaris/ZFS, because i know about OpenSolaris/ZFS. I cannot say the same about WAFL and NetApp.
So, i did talk about all the goodness of ZFS, and as a client, i think Oracle has a great advantage against the competitors: The OpenSolaris Project. I’m not buying magic from EMC Matrix Storage (that is really good, and i was a happy user sometime ago), or another magic from Hitachi. I’m buying a technology i was used to participate, and i was used to send emails for people i was used to know, and even to receive replies. The open model of OpenSolaris/ZFS is the way to go for Oracle/Sun to enter on a storage dominated market. The Unified model of fishworks seems to be the natural storage direction. But that is just my opinion, first as a community member, and second as a client.
If Oracle/Sun prefers to come to our door like EMC, Hitachi, or other closed/blackbox hardware company, good, i can play that game. I’m used to that market, and it’s simple to add Oracle/Sun to that “cloud”.

In the end, were interesting events, interesting people, and i really like to talk about such great piece of software. The Oracle/Sun Storage team from Brazil really knows the potential of ZFS, and it’s easy to show the value of this technology.
In each event i did give one book as a gift for one person, and i hope they enjoy it.
peace