Re: [9fans] Is 9Fans dead or alive

[Brantley Coile <brantleycoile@me.com>]

Nick,

Coraid, Inc sold network storage systems that consisted of our software running on more or less stock Supermicro hardware. We invented the ATA-over-Ethernet block storage network protocol. We sold almost $100,000,000 worth of stuff, somewhere north of 10,000 units, all running Plan 9.

I left Coraid the company in 2014 over disagreements with management on the direction of the company, and started SouthSuite Software. Coraid, Inc. was foreclosed on by the bank in 2015 and I was subsequently able to purchase the good parts of the old Coraid, including the brand name “Coraid.” Now, Coraid the brand lives on as a product of SouthSuite Software.

Now, we license that same software, or our continuing evolution of it, to run on Supermicro hardware our customer buys themselves at a big savings. We also support the existing Coraid equipment that is in the field.

You can check us out at http://www.coraid.com

Thanks for asking.

P. S. I still code exclusively in C and see no reason for me to change.

  Brantley

> On Aug 24, 2016, at 9:00 AM, Nickolas Peter <nickpeteromalley@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Brantley,
> 
> I am by no means an experienced developer or Plan 9 user, so I can hardly speak from the same experience level as most (I assume) of the posters on this list. I only recently found myself very interested in Plan 9, C, and embedded systems. As of now, I only run 9front as a learning environment on series of virtual machines.
> 
> It's really intriguing to hear that there's commercial hardware running Plan 9, and very motivating to see that there are still people utilizing Plan 9 in some way as a primary system.
> 
> When you mentioned using Plan 9 in your shipping software, were you referring to some internal software that you use to handle shipping hardware to customers, or software that you sell to customers (say, to run on your hardware)? I'm interested to hear more about it, if you're at liberty to share.
> 
> 
> Nick
> 
> 
> On Wednesday, August 24, 2016, Brantley Coile <brantleycoile@me.com> wrote:
> Some general comments.
> 
> It’s good to see it used in at least a few places. It’s too good a system to be the only one using it. But I will until providence completely forces me to do otherwise, which I don’t anticipate.
> 
> I’m really lucky to be able to use the system, especially in the way it was envisioned in the 1980’s. My first knowledge of it was when I asked Dennis Ritchie what was new. He said that Ken was playing around with the concept of union directories. Later, during one of my visits to the Labs, in 1988 I think, Dennis gave me a demonstration of the system.
> 
> One problem with most people who haven’t been as fortunate as I have, is they really just need a single system, not a distributed system. While Plan 9 makes a better single system for some things than most OSes, it’s really not supposed to have local disks at all. It really is designed to be a larger distributed timesharing system. At Coraid, we had two setups, one in Athens and one in Redwood City, that supported over 100 users in total. And without a single dedicated system admin. It was a very part time job, mostly for Erik, but Ian Ennis did some as well. It was very easy to manage because it was a single machine.
> 
> As far as I know, SouthSuite is now the only company both using it as a development system or shipping software based on Plan 9. Does anyone know of any others?
> 
> Different people choose tools for different reasons and to satisfy different requirements the world places on them. I chose to work in embedded appliances so I could pick the software I use. The PIX Firewall was a bit too early for Plan 9—it was not yet released when I wrote the PIX—but it was very much of the spirit, as was the Cisco LocalDirector. Soon, we began using the 1995 Plan 9 release and I have been using it almost exclusively ever since. I use it as the sole development environment and as the base of the products we ship.
> 
> In spite of our early success at Coraid with the SR, after the VC investment the use of Plan 9 became controversial. It’s not what others use, and in Sand Land (what else can one call Silicon Valley) that makes people nervous. Over my objections, the company attempted to move to Open Solaris. It’s a truism that a company that changes operating system goes out of business, and Coraid, Inc. again proved that to be true. The reason? A small company can’t afford the retooling costs to switch to another operating system.
> 
> But things have turned out well anyway, at least for me and the traditional Coraid users. Now I have everything from the trademark to the source code and now offer the Coraid product as a software product and can support existing Coraid users, both with software updates and with help getting their hardware fixed or replaced. We are helping all those folks who bought Coraid gear continue to get value of their purchase. One fellow sent me a note showing that he’s been up over 2,000 days without rebooting. There’s never a reason to fork-lift an SR.
> 
> I like to think we do a good job, but our performance, efficiency and low cost is all made possible by the superior system that was developed by the folks at the Labs from 1987 thru 2002.
> 
>   Brantley