How 45 Drives Open Source Houston Command Center Makes ZFS On Linux Easy

[@Leet_JN]

It's been really cool watching 45drives mature. They've come a long way since they branched off from Protocase. All because a young backup company, Backblaze, had a vision of affordable backups for all. Everything that has spurred from that has been industry changing.

[@PaulBunkey]

...So it's a custom version of Cockpit. Nice.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Yes, they start with the base of Cockpit and then add their extras. It's all documented in their GitHub

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Should I have started by thanking Linus for making the Linux kernel or go back even further in computer history to establish that 45 Drives did not invent everything I covered in the video? I titled the video highlighting their ZFS contribution but covered what the management interface they offer to ship with their servers can do.

[@entelin]

@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS I think he has a point to be honest. It's not a matter of lack of credit, but lack of important context. I was confused about this as well as I'm not familiar with cockpit, so that connection wasn't obvious to me. It's great that they created a plugin or fork of this other project to support their hardware and zfs. The context is useful because when you're thinking about what 45drives might be thinking about or doing in the future, there's quite a difference in effort. My initial thought from the video was "Wow that's a huge effort 45drives put in, are they moving in the direction of directly competing with the TrueNAS project?" That's different from "We have created this value-added addition or customization to other available software".

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@R ight did he make it come off like 45Drives built all features? FYI a lot of stuff (libraries and things) needed to make Cockpit work are not from RedHat either yet it's a "RedHat project"

[@severgun]

@examen1996 no credits to cockpit and github link did not bring you to houston project because there is no such project. This is confusing and not OK.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

The @45drives KZbin Channel www.youtube.com/@45Drives github.com/45Drives knowledgebase.45drives.com/ My Original 45 Drives Storinator Q30 Review kzbin.info/www/bejne/aYDTqIikqrFpkM0 45 Storinator Q30 Followup Review 2022 kzbin.info/www/bejne/g6W6fmRvftCgmtE 00:00 ⏱ Timestamps ⏱ 00:00 ▶ Houston Command Center ZFS Made Easy 01:28 ▶ Interface Overview Intro 02:12 ▶ Networking Management 02:58 ▶ Storage Management 03:34 ▶ User Management 04:08 ▶ Managing Services 05:12 ▶ Viewing Logs 05:44 ▶ File Navigator and File Sharing 06:40 ▶ 45 Drives Server Chassis Management 09:45 ▶ Software Update 10:08 ▶ FIO Benchmark 10:39 ▶ ZFS Web Management 12:23 ▶ ZFS Snapshots and Replication 15:44 ▶ Expanding ZFS 18:23 ▶ ZFS Scrub Jobs 19:00 ▶ Houston Command VS Appliance System

[@rdwatson]

That is an easy to work with interface. Thanks for the overview.

[@prashanthb6521]

19:00 I dont go for the "Appliance" solution because I feel like in the event of a catastrophic failure it will become difficult to retrieve data. ZFS has enough support and open enough for me to recover my data. Hey Tom ZFS pool/data recovery can become the topic of another video if you like to talk on that :)

[@skittle-brau]

ZFS is simple to import on other systems (dependent on feature flags enabled), so you don’t have to feel ‘locked in’ to one particular distro or OS. That’s no different when moving from an ‘appliance’ distro like TrueNAS SCALE to standard Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD etc.

[@jonathan.sullivan]

Now we just need a guide migrating ZFS configuration from TrueNAS scale to Houston.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

You can import the ZFS data into another system via Houston

[@entelin]

Are they wanting to compete with TrueNAS perhaps? Pretty impressive effort.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

They are building custom alternative options to help with managing a large number drives.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

they are already competitors

[@hawks5196]

Could you show how to get this set up and running? Do you need to install cockpit first and then add the additional modules? Also, would you suggest not using cockpit if it’s a public facing server (rented in a datacenter) or is there an easy way to secure/proxy it

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Yes, you install cockpit then install the modules. They have that documented in their github github.com/45Drives/cockpit-zfs-manager

[@joshua_lee732]

Cockpits service doesn't actually need to be running. You can use a cockpit instance on your local network to communicate to the instances of cockpit on the remote systems.

[@jfkastner]

Awesome overview, thanks

[@SB-qm5wg]

Pretty cool. TY

[@barrybpl]

I already have a system up and running, if I install Houston will it integrate nicely with what I have set up or try and over write my settings?

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

I don't know your setup, but Houston reads from your settings.

[@barrybpl]

I'd be worried if you did ;) It's nothing fancy, Debian 11 box with 2 x ssd's mdadm boot/os mirror and 3 x 6TB hdd raidz1 array, acting as my router/firewall pc, ntopng, samba shares, 2.5GbE network, dhcp, dns, webserver, that sort of thing,. I had been looking at installing Houston but was concerned it would try and "take over" like cPanel does, although that's a different beast.

[@JayantBB78]

Though TrueNAS is better, this is also awesome. Hope it work on RHEL too.

[@hescominsoon]

can you run this in a vm and have it tlka to the other chassis or does this have to be installed on each chassis?

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

installed on the base OS

[@TravisHershberger]

The base os (Ubuntu) includes KVM hypervisor by default if you feel the need to run virtual machines on a 45 drives box. That said, by the time you need enough storage to make a 45drives server make sense, you are also most likely to need all the CPU and RAM to service the storage.

[@hescominsoon]

I was hoping we could run the control software on its own VM and manage multiple 35 drive boxes without having to run this operating system directly on the chassis 🙂 kind of like true command from IX system 🙂

[@JanVanhumbeek]

At 13:52 you mention 2 snapshots per day, and right after you say 2 per week when you change the Interval Time Unit. Isn't it 1 snapshot every 2 days, and every 2 weeks respectively?

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Yeah, I said it wrong.

[@demanuDJ]

Is this project dead? I can't find any non-legacy docks for it or repositories

[@kchiem]

12:22 or gow down here..

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Words are hard , ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

[@berndeckenfels]

Meh, If you do not implement service restart automatically at least show a message and don’t rely on manuals…

[@edwinkm2016]

I agree, at least add the text on screen with a url to the page. Another remark said was to reload the page to get the correct information is not acceptable. That said, it looks promising.

[@dawsond3734]

The ZFS module will be renewed in time as it is promising and there are definitely many caveats with the module currently.

[@pepeshopping]

Oh, a Cockpit plugin or derivative. Guess check napp-it. ZFS admin tool for Open Indiana. Used it before Free/TrueNAS and that was a one-dude code/solution.