iXsystems, Inc.

I've heard quite a lot about iXsystems and FreeNAS over the years and really wanted to use it but I could never get the business to let me build one because of the lack of support. The FreeNAS community is wonderful, but the business would never accept that as a risk. I work in a manufacturing environment and loss of production cost starts at $100K per hour. That includes the loss of producing and employees standing around doing nothing. They already went global with the ERP systems, but these systems specific to the manufacturing processes and automation need to remain on site. (Thank goodness)

We were recently replacing 8 year old physical servers and the environment surrounding them. The automation vendor released a whitepaper about their software supporting virtualization, specifically VMware 6.7. The vendor didn't have a preference on storage, so this was my chance to use something from iXsystems. I couldn't get management to embrace FreeNAS, so TrueNAS with Gold Support was perfect! This mitigated any risk from the business and sent their argument to /dev/null. Especially when they saw the price and features of TrueNAS, that coupled with the fact that I came in way under budget going with iXsystems!

I designed a system with 4 HP DL360 G10's (Forced to use them), 2 HP Aruba Cores with Aruba Access switches, and also a virtual VyOS* cluster to provide HA across the entire solution. For storage, I used a pair of TrueNAS M40's each with 35TB of usable storage. Not a big solution, but powerful enough and scalable enough to expand to other lines in the very near future.
*Yes, VyOS is free and goes against the business' requirement not use opensource, but production continues without the need for routing. I can rebuild the router before anyone would ever know. In essence, what they don't know really won't hurt them in this case.

Coming from the old HP EVA4400, 3Par, NetApp, EMC, and also Cisco storage platforms, I knew that FreeNAS was always something that the big guys were chasing but I've never used it prior to this case. FreeNAS/TrueNAS has all the features that everyone wants; It's the 'Brawndo' of the storage world. It naively supports features like; block storage, deduplication, snapshots, mirroring, and support for multiple virtualization platforms. All of this with no extra licenses to purchase. You can't beat that at all.

So, on to my story. If you're still with me, thank you for sticking around. This is what happened during our deployment. The vendor doing the work came on site to install all the VM's and their applications. I already had the entire infrastructure installed, complete with VMware, templates, datastores, etc. It was turnkey for them. During their install, they wanted to take snapshots of the systems during each of their self defined 'milestones'. It was agreed that once they were complete, we could destroy the VMware snapshots and take a backup of the system to use as a golden image in the event of a disaster.

So we got to the point to destroy the snapshots. I approved it with them and I started that process of removing the snapshots. Shortly after that and while at lunch, I got a call asking if I already started it. What had happened was, they made a mistake and would have to start over unless they could go back to 11AM that day. Here's where the fun happened........

When I deployed the set of M40's with iX support, we setup snapshots and replication tasks on the storage side. I didn't really pay attention to this part of the install, but I did remember it was configured and knew where to go. Those of you familiar with how snapshots work in FreeNAS will already know how this turned out, but for those who don't, I will try to explain.

Since snapshots were configured on the storage side, I was able to present a datastore snapshot clone from the TrueNAS to a host, import the VM's, and let them recover their mistake, then destroy the clone. This saved them over 2 weeks of work. (I got a simple, "Thanks!") FreeNAS/TrueNAS is VERY simple to understand and the learning curve minimal. I didn't have to call into support, but was nice to have them available if needed. If you understand the basics behind iSCSI, LUNs, Shares, Volumes, Datastores, Snapshots, etc, you'll rarely have an issue.

I just got done upgrading 11.2-U5 to 11.2-U7. Since 11.3 is RC1, I wanted to put the latest on now and install 11.3 when it becomes a mature release (about 1-2 months after release). That was a simple process too! To summarize, "Damn, I love this thing!"

I've done significant business with iX at 2 different companies ($1M+ spend at each), with a total storage volume of multiple PB, and >1000 servers across several locations (including some international).

At the first company, they eventually became our primary storage vendor, and also provided a significant portion of our servers. I was initially referred to iX when I needed to develop a custom storage solution for our company. We evaluated commercial solutions as well as white box solutions. None of the other white box providers I worked with provided the level of knowledge, support, and flexibility I was looking for, but iX was the partner I needed. They talked through very complex technical requirements, and assisted me in developing a solution that ultimately became the standard storage solution for our company, displacing a multi-million dollar proprietary solution. Their systems were always well QAed prior to reaching us, which meant an extremely low level of DOAs. For those in the hyperscale business, you understand how beneficial this is. They supported us extremely well with problems such as driver debugs, firmware upgrades, etc including facilitating OEM support (raid card, hard drive, and motherboard manufacturers, among others). Their knowledge on most reliable hardware components is indispensable, allowing us to easily select battle tested raid cards, 10G cards, hard drives, etc.

At my next company, when we began questioning the value our brand name servers were providing (especially when they rescinded our previous discount level), I proposed looking at iX. After a close evaluation by my department, iX was deemed the best alternative, with the flexibility to meet our exact power and space requirements, and provide us with the blend of hardware models we needed to meet our requirements. We ultimately ordered over $1M worth of hardware from iX.

What impresses me most about iX is their deep technical knowledge, their commitment to support and quality, and their willingness to solve any reasonable problem you present them with, be it a rush order, a unique configuration, a fully integrated solution involving non-standard vendors, or any type of additional services (OS install, custom burnin cycle, etc). While their pricing is not rock bottom, it is quite competitive, and the additional support, quality, and reduced headaches is well worth the small premium over bottom of the barrel solutions.

I have been working with ixSystems for something like 10 years now. I can't tell you how much of an impact they've had on my business. The servers are rock-solid for starters. I think this is due to them taking their time to "burn in" a machine before certifying it and shipping it out. After going through two server "refreshes" totaling around 50 machines, I've only ever had *one* die on me. It was in production for a year, and it just died a few days ago. They immediately shipped out a box so I could return it, and I have no doubt they'll get it fixed and back to me shortly. My rep is a great guy. He works to understand exactly what I'm trying to do and makes sure I get the right options in front of me. And they don't have your 'typical sales bro' people either. They actually understand the tech and what you're trying to accomplish. Not to mention, they have technical staff that are amazing. On a new build that was in testing, I found a NIC would lock up for a few minutes under very specific conditions. After talking with the team at ixSystems, they tracked it down to a buggy driver in FreeBSD and we came up with a work-around while waiting for the fix to land. With such a short troubleshooting delay, we stayed on track to get machines into production.

The bottom line is this: I came in to a large network that measured the uptime of their servers in hours. It was nothing short of a disaster. In a very short amount of time and well under budget, we now measure our uptime in years. You can only have stable software if the underlying hardware is solid. In just a few weeks, one of servers will hit 3 years uptime. The only reason it's not longer is because of an extended power outage that drained our UPS battery. That's why I go with ixSystems.

While reading this review you may think for a moment that my perspective is negative, but it is not. We bought into TrueNAS at it's very earliest inception. I was looking for a high performing solution for our virtual environment on a shoestring budget. I am also a proponent of companies that are built upon open source products. So the TrueNAS storage system was a good fit. Their original product was built on top of Supermicro hardware. I've bought nothing but Supermicro for over 10 years so this also seemed a good fit. But, the truth is we ran into issues only a few months in after receiving and installing our TrueNAS. We had various hardware issues that spanned over several years. It was a struggle and in all honesty there were times I thought it was time to move on to other products. Introducing iXsystems support team. This is why I stuck it out with their product. Their support team was always available and never gave up on working through the problems. I'm not going to go into granular detail about each of the various issues we had over the years and how their support handled each one, but there wasn't anything they wouldn't do or try to assist us in getting through the problems we were having, at their expense. I've worked with Tier one product lines that had frustratingly outsourced support or would rather hold the customer accountable than themselves. This was not my experience with iXsystems. This is why I am still using the TrueNAS product today. We are now on their new hardware HA platform and it has been solid in both stability and performance. Regardless of the newfound stability in their new product line, I sleep well at night knowing that the iXsystems outstanding support team is a phone call away.

If you listen to podcasts such as BSD Now (and if not, why not??), have hung around conferences or chatted with anyone that's been around open source for a while and iX are mentioned, you'll have heard tell of the magnitude of things they do for the community and the care they put into every aspect of their business..phrases such as 'white glove treatment', 'pre-sales engineers that are truly knowledgeable', 'experts in hardware and software' and 'attention to detail' will be heard, but its not until you actually go through the process with iX that you realise how, regardless of intent, you've likely subconsciously logged those phrases as 'standard marketing fluff' over the years and completely under appreciated their depth and value! I'm delighted to say that by working with Thomas and his colleagues I've had the opportunity to discover how things really should be done - nothing is too much trouble and there is no pressure to make snap decisions or complete within some arbitrary time frame; International shipping and taxes - no problem ;O) And the best bit (ok, this may be personal preference, but i doubt it lol) - thanks to the awesome (and i really mean that...its not a word we use on this side of the pond that often!) people in marketing - after hearing that there wasn’t really enough stickers and flashing horns to spread around..THEY SENT MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! would your vendor have thought of that?? ;O)

We were looking at storage systems for a backup project at work, and in the course of our search, we came across iXsystems. We were looking at some of the "big name" storage vendors, but immediately liked working with the iXsystems guys because they weren't the typical computer salesmen that are so typical of most vendors. We were looking at the TrueNAS units, and between the ability to test it out and get familiar with it using the FreeNAS software, as well as the unparalleled pre-sales support we received, we decided to go with the TrueNAS solution.

When we received the units, we ran into some of the typical issues that you get with any new system install, but the tech support that we received was flawless, with quick response and easy solutions to the issues we found. Just like FreeNAS, the more I use TrueNAS, the more I like it.. Coming from a background where I was using storage systems from many of the big names, the TrueNAS systems are wonderful to work with, giving you real power and flexibility on top of the fantastic ZFS filesystem. Plus, I think the blue bezels look really cool in the datacenter, although some of my coworkers wish it was basic black.

We used a variety of OEMs from large (Dell) to small shops before settling on iX 7 years ago. Right away they distinguished themselves with excellent service, deep OS knowledge, a will-do-whatever-it-takes attitude towards solving problems and also towards building things to meet our demanding, precise and sometimes unusual expectations. I am an IT Director for a company in the financial industry. My company makes quick decisions and changes of direction to meet new goals and iX has always been great about dealing with our changing requirements and dealing with large orders that need to be filled asap. We have thousands of machines and they have really been exemplary in dealing with some of the issues of scale that we've had to grapple. We've had unusual memory, motherboard, bios and other problems that originated upstream from them and they've helped advocate for us and and navigate the sometimes byzantine process of dealing with Intel, SuperMicro, and other vendors that don't like to immediately own up to manufacturing or design problems with their products. Of all the companies we do business with, iX stands out as the one we trust the most and can rely on to meet the needs of a core part of our business.

I was in the market for a network storage unit and was looking at those "other" NAS devices when I happened to come across iXsystems. Looking at their offerings it looked like they had just what I needed and more. When I called I talked to Kevin and he worked with me to design the best "bang for the buck" that would fit our needs and budget. What we ended up with wasn't one the very nice high end systems (enterprise) that they sell, which I would've loved to have, but I needed some compromise because of price. He was able to put together a great system that fit my budget. I was very impressed by the customer service and no pressure sales. I now have a great NAS unit with quality parts and features that those other guys don't have. I do all maintenance remote and the remote console is great. It has been online for 5 months with no issues. Rock Solid! If I do have problems, I know I can call them anytime. I will always come back to iXsystems for al l of my Storage needs from now on. Im glad I found them. I cant wait to get another one.

I started using iXsystems, TrueNAS in October of 2013. I had always known about FreeNAS and used it personally for home use as a, iSCSI, CIFS, and FTP solution. I started working for the school system in Clarksville TN, and was tasked with finding some new storage options for both file servers, iSCSI SAN storage, and security recording storage for IP network cameras. That is when I found iXsystems TrueNas was the Enterprise version of the FreeNAS that I had been using. TrueNAS iXsystems was able to provide us with all our storage needs, with better quality hardware, more storage space, and superior performance over other vender storage options. We are currently running 35 TrueNas servers three of our servers are dedicated as iSCSI storage devices that provide iSCSI volumes for 85 virtual machines on 9 ESXI hosts. We also have 15 security camera servers, and two network storage devices for backing up are apple servers and several rsync’s from other file servers. I am very pleased with our iXsystems sales representative, and the iXsystems support team. I highly recommend iXsystems to anyone looking for a high performance storage option at the right price. Thank You iXsystems keep up the good work!

After looking tirelessly for a home NAS system that would suit my needs i finally came across iXsystems. (i was looking for a 4 bay diskless with at least 8 gigs of ECC ram) Looked into their FreeNAS Mini and it has been the only desktop NAS on the market that i have found that will support enough memory to run my ZFS Pool smoothly. Every other brand i looked at either would not support enough memory or if it did it was only rack mountable, not desktop

So i called in to inquire about the FreeNAS Mini and after talking with the rep I can honestly say that i am not even considering purchasing a pre-built server from anywhere else. i have not come across another brand with hardware comparable to iXsystems and i dont think anyone could make FreeNAS more easily and readily available than the FreeNAS Mini does.

If you are a fan of Open Source software and enjoy the scalability and ease of use FreeNAS offers then I would have to say that iXsystems is for you and they will go above and beyond your expectations as they have mine.

In our line of work we deal with well over 100 TBs of data during the course of any given year. Prior to purchasing a custom FreeNAS server from iX Systems, we were building our own ZFS-based storage, with less than stellar (read: sad) performance results. I cannot give iX Systems enough kudos regarding our recent server purchase. The hardware build quality is just fantastic and the performance blows all of our custom-built existing storage servers out of the water. The time from shipping box to in-the-rack and on-the-network was less than 30 minutes. This was easily the fastest and most pain-free installation I've ever done. FreeNAS is also working out exceedingly well for our needs. For the first time since we've started our operations we've got our workstations operating on data directly on the storage server using zvols exported over iSCSI. FreeNAS makes the complicated seem easy, and my production team couldn't be happier with the workflow change! Especially since they don't have to shuffle physical volumes around the office anymore. I used to dread deploying a new storage server. Now I can't wait to buy the next one.

I recently purchased an individual Workstation, the Apollo II, from IX Systems for Personal use. My Sales Account Manager, Thomas P., was very helpful in tailoring a solution for my needs.

While definitely not just a 'click and buy' process, I was pleasantly surprised to understand all the testing and verification done by IX's Engineering Team prior to shipping out a product. This alone would give me confidence in recommending any of their solutions to my Enterprise Work Environment, but it doesn't just stop there:

The Hardware, Components, and Build-Quality are well-sourced, and the PC-BSD Desktop Operating System is simply "Miles Beyond" anything else out there, period.

The system is remarkably well-engineered, quiet, and runs
surprisingly cool. Having seen many similar Workstations with comparable System Specifications run much hotter and noisier under much lower load, it is evident that a lot of testing goes into the pure Physics and overall makeup of an IX Systems Product.

I simply cannot recommend anyone purchase from anyone other than IX Systems, even if it means saving a few extra dollars. The Mileage, Quality, and Enterprise-Level Support truly make for a complete package.

We've been using TrueNAS for 12 months and our experience has been fantastic. We discovered the product while searching for reliable, high capacity storage at relatively low cost for our digital archival needs. We looked at a number of different options but the TrueNAS was the only truly enterprise grade solution at a compelling price point. Our pre-sales experience really made it clear that iXsystems understands the needs of enterprise customers and offers solutions and support that rival the biggest names in the storage industry. Most importantly, experience with iXsystems has been excellent after the sale as well. While we've fortunately had no issues with the solution we purchased, we did work with support to upgrade the system to an HA configuration several months after the initial purchase. We found their support to be responsive, knowledgeable and very easy to work with. Their focus on customer satisfaction is very impressive. We're so pleased with the product we'll actually be purchasing a second TrueNAS array this year for DR purposes. You'd be hard-pressed to find a better combination of capability, capacity, performance, reliability, and support for the cost.

We've been purchasing IXsystems servers for a few years now and couldn't be more satisfied with their hardware, customer service and overall experience dealing with different teams within IX. Whether we're ordering 1 NAS or 100 servers they always deliver in all areas.
They are very professional and always place their customers interests ahead of theirs. After past experiences with other server OEMs I am certain that they provide the most value.
IX has always taken the time to understand our needs as an organization hear and apply any input we may have and make appropriate suggestions where needed. They are very reliable, dynamic and I know that I can count on them to provide last minute solutions whenever we have a time sensitive request.
Their customer service is second to none, rarely have we experienced hardware or logistical issues and any issue has been resolved professionally, following up every step along the way until satisfactory completion.
I would highly recommend IXsystems for any server and storage needs.

I've always enjoyed my interactions with iXsystems. They've been a reliable and trustworthy partner for solving my hardware issues and custom designs to solve niche problems. I often come to them with challenging constrains for how I need a solution to perform, and they've never failed to help me find something that worked. Additionally, they've been exemplary about remembering my challenges, and surfacing new possible solutions as they present themselves.

They have always been up front when they don't think a solution is a good one, and can clearly communicate why they have concerns. This has helped me avoid hidden complications on several occasions that I would have blindly blundered into without their advice. They've put me in touch with the perfect contacts at vendors when I've found challenging issues, and found ways to get me esoteric demo equipment for design validations.

I've never had a similar experience with any vendor, and I really value the relationship that iXsystems has taken the time to build with me.

We purchased a TrueNAS Pro-HA from iXSystems. The sales experience beforehand was great: Kevin possessed a deep knowledge of their products, and was able to configure a complete system that both met our requirements and fit our budget. We couldn't find a ZFS HA cluster elsewhere that was anywhere near our price point; a system with this level of hardware/software integration and support from Oracle or a Nexenta partner would have greatly exceeded our budget. TrueNAS appliances are preconfigured and tested before they're shipped. During the pre-configuration conference call, I had a question about the configuration of virtual network interface shared by both nodes in the HA cluster, and was impressed when one of the support people put me on hold while he asked the developer who wrote the code. Support has been responsive to our questions since receiving the system: they set up a WebEx session to assist us with configuration issues, and escalated an NFS user-interface issue we encountered to the developers.

IX Systems has been an excellent resource for my company as we've struggled with commoditizing storage.

Storage growth has exploded over the last few years. Working in a backup environment we've leveraged the best in class applications to allow for deduplication and high speed data ingest. However; as a managed service provider our cost was directly tied to storage. With the high cost of SAN infrastructure we were quickly pricing ourselves out of the market.

Kevin Le at IX Systems helped us realize the cost of unnecessary SAN features. Working with him we were able to get a true understanding of our requirements. With our backup software doing the heavy lifting; he was able to help us right size a NAS infrastructure at a fraction of expected costs.

Bottom line. IX Systems was able to keep our costs low enough to allow us to remain competitive as a managed service provider in the data backup / archive / recovery space.

As a personal rather than corporate customer of the IX Systems Mini I have never felt that I was a 2nd class citizen or that my business wasn't valued as much as any other customer. From sale to fixing an unfortunate component issue IX systems impressed at every level and stage. An intermittent and difficult to reproduce problem was not questioned and the prompt replacement part has performed flawlessly. I am one who judges most closely when things go wrong and IX excelled in all aspects. I would not hesitate to recommend IX to ANYONE looking for NAS for personal or corporate use. Their products perform as advertised and are easy to use for the novice while offering convenient access to advanced features for the NAS/ZFS expert. Their people are friendly, professional, patient, and a pleasure to work with. There is a vibrant public community actively supported by IX and an immense asset.

We have worked with iXsystems over the years both for our internal systems as well as a supplier of custom-specified hardware for our on-prem SaaS deployments to our customer sites. This has made for an interesting sales channel, but something iX and Thomas Pham have truly made easier. Working together, we have been able to ensure the right hardware and preloaded and tested software is delivered, even going as far as working with us to deliver install guides with serial numbers and pictures of the actual hardware being shipped out. We default to iX not only due to cost but TCO. All of our internal and on-prem deployments continue to run with little operational issues, outliving our planned failure rate. I attribute this to iX's quality control and focus on long term part compatibility more than anything else. With remote deployments globally, this is a big benefit to us.

I recently learnt about FreeBSD, PCBSD and OpenBSD. Soon thereafter I decided to take the plunge and opt for a BSD desktop. I was advised to purchase a thinkpad given its relative hardware friendliness to BSD. As I investigated further it became evident that there were software-hardare quirks with thinkpad too. I did not want to spend money on a product that was not 100% functionally compatible. That is why i contacted iXsystems. They promptly took on the challenge and offered me a deal i could not refuse: a brilliant workstation with outstanding specs (Xeon processor, SSD etc) for a very reasonable price. Thomas Pham, an outstanding iXman, was extremely professional and helpful. Earlier, I contacted with other members of the iX team. All equally professional and dedicated to the consumer satisfaction. One word describes their service: good old American professionalism and service.