Guenther Alka has posted napp-it 0.325, a pre-release, open source AFP (netatalk) and SMB file server based on ZFS. He is looking for beta testers. It also has Time Machine support, ACL support, and Active Directory support, and includes a web and database server. Alka described napp-it for us:

1. It's appliance-software to build a server appliance. You can run it on real hardware or virtually. It is based on NexentaCore or OpenIndiana (free successor of Opensolaris). You could install it virtually without problem if Open Solaris is supported.

I usually run it virtualized on VMware ESXI 4.1 on a VTI-capable Mainboards. On these Mainboards (example mainboards with new Intel Server Chipsets) you can passthrough the SAS/ SATA Disc-Controller to your Nexenta or OpenIndiana Guest to allow full disc-controller with ZFS (will use Nexenta Strorage Driver, not esxi driver) to have full performance.

I then share these ZFS-Pools via NFS to store other VM's to have ZFS Snapshots (Concept of ESXI Virtual Server with included ZFS-Storage Server.)

2. With any Solaris-based OS, you will always store files on ZFS-Pools. A ZFS Pool is a container for 'vdevs'. Such a vdev can be either a single disk or a raid from multiple disks. (raid-1, raidz1, raidz2, raidz3) If you create such a pool, all disks are formatted. Pool capacity can be expanded by adding more vdevs.

napp-t has the highest data security and performance with the newest ZFS features, such as:

• Unlimited snapshots with no delay and no extra space needed on creation
• Online file check with data-refresh
• Online compression
• Deduplication
• Hybrid-storage (ssd read or write cache-drives)
• Nearly unlimited expandable data-pools up to hundreds of disks
• Controller-independent ZFS-software-RAID
• RAID-z3 (triple parity)
• Fast iSCSI and NFS Server
• Appliance, installed within minutes, managed via browser, just like a wlan-station

There's more on installation at napp-it.org.