Joining up the dots

OneFS

Isilon like most storage companies runs a custom LINUX OS, in this instance a derivative of FreeBSD which they call OneFS.  Unlike many other companies, Isilon don't hide their LINUX lineage or hide commands.  Chances are anything you can do from the command line on your favourite LINUX box, you can do on an Isilon node...that does not mean that you should!

Isilon maintains a number of supported product variants.  As you can see below, Isilon has five product lines that they're currently maintaining.

 

GA (General Availability)

6.5.5.x
6.5.4.x
6.0.x
5.5.x
5.0.x

Quite why they maintain both 6.5.4.x and 6.5.5.x I couldn't say.

As well as the general availability, Isilon also has early access builds (may be production-ready, but test well) and beta version of OneFS.

 

EA (Early Access)

6.5.5.x

 

Beta (Only for the brave)

7.0 Beta 3

[Note:  Previously major Isilon release were named after verities of chillis (or Chilli Peppers for our American cousins).  Alas the most recent release have had names such as Whirled Peas (word peace) and Mavericks...Mavericks is OK but doesn't have quite the same kick as Dorset Naga :-) ]

As a general rule of thumb, you always want to be within a couple of dot releases of the latest GA build.

Recently moved to a monthly dot release schedule, which can make keeping up with the latest GA quite a challenge - thankfully rolling upgrade between minor releases is possible.

Which Dot Am I?

Finding out which version of OneFS you are running is very straightforward.  If you launch the wweb interface then the version of OneFS is displayed.  Virtually every page within the Isilon web interface also displays the current version.



For those that like to use the command like the command line, the version is displayed after you ssh onto a node

Copyright (c) 2001-2010 Isilon Systems, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1992-2010 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
        The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2001-2010 Isilon Systems, Inc.  All rights reserved. Isilon and
Isilon Systems are registered trademarks of Isilon Systems, Inc.

Isilon OneFS v6.0.3.10
zeus-1# 

No Patches?

As mentioned above, Isilon has recently moved to a monthly minor release schedule, one of the reasons for this is to try and avoid the need to issue individual patch files.  Occasionally a patch or two may come out, but these can be easily installed via the command line.

Install Package
zeus-1# isi pkg install patch-71234.tar
List Packages
zeus-1# isi pkg list
Uninstall Package
zeus-1#  isi pkg delete patch-71234

Patches normally come with a readme file which will advise if the cluster needs to be restarted or a script executed once the patch has been installed.


In a later post, I'll comment on how to check the OS version installed across multiple nodes.

Until next time.