If you haven’t heard by now, Joyent has recently open sourced SmartDataCenter and the Manta object storage platform. Most people probably don’t realize it yet but this is a really big deal. Mad props to everyone at Joyent involved in this massive effort! Disclaimer: The method described below is NOT supported for use with Joyent SDC. Since the announcement, there has been a steady stream of individuals drop by the #smartos IRC channel on Freenode asking whether it’s possible to convert their existing SmartOS installs to SDC.

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I frequently have the need to create ZFS snapshots and replicate them from one host to another for backup and disaster recovery purposes. There are many blog posts and articles that present custom scripts using zfs send/recv to automate this task and they all work to some extent. I have tried most of them but recently settled on two in particular that I’ve found to be robust enough to meet all of my needs.

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I am skipping the SmartOS introduction because Magnus Hedemark has us covered with Discovering SmartOS. Instead, I’ll dive straight in and tell you that it’s great as an all-in-one storage and virtualization server, despite only being branded as the latter. Maybe you’ve been using ESXi, Nexenta CP/NexentaStor, or OpenIndiana to fill this role (or even a combination of both on separate machines), but I assure you that it’s possible to have your cake and eat it too.

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