Recently I started using SmartSVN running remotely on a Solaris 10 server and displaying on my Windows XP machine via Xming (the free Xserver). I quickly ran into some performance and usability issues which I hope to have solved.
UPDATE: No ZFS Support for Replication Manager in the near future
Using storage level snapshots can be used to run backups without directly requiring resources from the original host.
EMC Replication Manager coordinates the creation of application consistent snapshots across all the hosts in your network. It handles scheduling creation/expiration of snapshots, mounting and unmounting from backup servers, etc. from a single console.
Although it is not tightly integrated into EMC Networker like the similar Networker PowerSnap module, it can be used to start a backup process after taking a new snapshot and it has the capability to manage snapshots unrelated to backups from a GUI.
While the data sheet claims support for Solaris, there are several caveats which I have run into.
Someone currently building an internal development environment required some integration between servers using SSH and the webservd user.
He came to me when he saw that the default home directory for the webservd user is /. He didn't want to create a /.ssh/authorized_keys file and I didn't blame him. My first reaction was to change the home directory but I didn't want to break something so I opened up Google and found something incredible.
DISCLAIMER: The following is quoted from documentation at docs.sun.com (emphasis is mine). I do not recommend you actually listen to it's instructions:
Recently I created my first ZFS clones but quickly realized that there was no simple way to tell the clones from the regular filesystems. My first instinct was to run 'zfs list -t clone' similar to 'zfs list -t snapshot' but this didn't work. Maybe it works in newer versions of ZFS.
I've been working with Unix for a fairly long time now- about 13 years.
I'll admit that I started with Linux and thought it was light years ahead of SunOS 4.x running on those old SPARC machines- I mean who had heard of SPARC processors? I remember my boss trying to explain to me that even an older SPARC processor was more powerful than a newer Intel Pentium processor. I didn't really believe him. In time, I convinced them to get rid of most of their SPARC/Solaris in favor of the hip, free, and cheap Intel/Linux combination.
Now I see that I couldn't have been more wrong. I realize that SunOS 4.x probably still has features which I don't know how to use properly. When I look at Solaris 10, ZFS, Zones, LDOMS, DTrace, etc. I not really sure you could pay me to work with Linux (that would be soo depressing). That isn't even mentioning the SPARC hardware it runs on- Can any Intel server compare to a T5140???