iXsystems, Inc. is a privately owned American computer technology company based in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...

that develops, sells and supports computing and storage products and services. Its principal products are customized

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

distributions, including the discontinued desktop operating system TrueOS (formerly PC-BSD), the FreeBSD based

file server In computing, a file server (or fileserver) is a computer attached to a network that provides a location for shared disk access, i.e. storage of computer files (such as text, image, sound, video) that can be accessed by workstations within a co ...

s and

network attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. In this context, the term "NAS" can refer to both the technology and systems ...

systems TrueNAS Core (previously FreeNAS) and TrueNAS Enterprise, and the

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

based TrueNAS SCALE. It also markets

hardware platform A computing platform, digital platform, or software platform is the infrastructure on which software is executed. While the individual components of a computing platform may be obfuscated under layers of abstraction, the ''summation of the requi ...

s for these products, and develops enterprise-scale storage architectures and converged infrastructures. As part of its activities, the company has strong ties to the

community, has repeatedly donated hardware and support to fledgling projects within the BSD community, and sponsors and develops development within FreeBSD, as well as being a sponsor and attendee of

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

community events.

History

iXsystems was founded in 1991 as Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDI, later BSDi) by Rick Adams and members of the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

Computer Systems Research Group The Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) was a research group at the University of California, Berkeley, that was dedicated to enhancing AT&T Unix operating system and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. History Profes ...

(CSRG), including Keith Bostic, Kirk McKusick, Mike Karels, Bill Jolitz and Donn Seeley. In the year 2000, Berkeley Software Design, Inc. acquired enterprise server manufacturer Telenet System Solutions, Inc., which was founded in 1996 and operated from the same San Jose, California office and manufacturing facility that iXsystems operates today. In 2001, BSDi sold its operating systems business to

Wind River Systems Wind River Systems, Inc., also known as Wind River (trademarked as Wndrvr), is an Alameda, California–based company, subsidiary of Aptiv PLC. The company develops embedded system and cloud software consisting of real-time operating systems sof ...

and spun off its hardware business and iXtreme line of servers as iXsystems, Inc. In 2002, OffMyServer, Inc., owned by two BSDi employees, acquired iXsystems, Inc. and operated it as OffMyServer, Inc. until restoring the iXsystems name in 2005. In 2006, iXsystems adopted the PC-BSD project and hired its founder, Kris Moore. In 2007, iXsystems acquired FreeBSD Mall, Inc., reuniting all the portions of the original BSDi that had been spun off to

. In 2009, iXsystems negotiated to continue the FreeNAS project when its developers decided to move it to

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

. iXsystems introduced a comprehensive rewrite of FreeNAS in 2011 which now provides the platform for the "FreeNAS Mini" SMB NAS arrays and "TrueNAS" enterprise storage arrays. In August 2010, BSD author Dru Lavigne joined iXsystems and in July 2013, Jordan K. Hubbard, one of the founders of the FreeBSD project, joined iXsystems as CTO.

Products and services

Servers

iXsystems designs, sells and supports custom

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

servers for workgroups through data centers with a focus on support for the

operating system. All iXsystems servers are subjected to a three-day burn-in process to reduce returns and are available with

as an alternative operating system.

TrueNAS

TrueNAS is the brand for ixSystems' open source

platform. It includes: :* TrueNAS CORE (previously FreeNAS) - a free file server and expandable platform based on FreeBSD. :* TrueNAS SCALE - a

based hyperconverged version of the TrueNAS platform. :* TrueNAS Enterprise - an enterprise file server for commercial use, based on CORE or SCALE. :* TrueNAS branded hardware - enterprise storage arrays, a

network-attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a Heterogeneous computing, heterogeneous group of clients. In this context, the term "NAS" can refer to both th ...

(NAS) systems,

storage area network A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block device, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access Computer data storage, data storage devices, such as disk ...

(SAN) devices, and

High Availability High availability (HA) is a characteristic of a system that aims to ensure an agreed level of operational performance, usually uptime, for a higher than normal period. There is now more dependence on these systems as a result of modernization ...

systems, with up to 10 petabytes raw capacity. The FreeNAS project was originally launched by third party developers in October 2005 and aimed to create an

system based on FreeBSD 6.0. In September 2009, the development team concluded that the project, then at release 0.7, required a complete rewrite to accommodate modern features such as a plug-in architecture, and the project gradually forked, with a new version based on

, and the existing version being transferred to iXsystems, who rewrote it with a new architecture based on

8.1, releasing FreeNAS 8 Beta in November 2010. On November 19, 2010, iXsystems released FreeNAS 8 Beta, its first release of the popular

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

software-defined storage project that it adopted and rewrote. FreeNAS is based on the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

and the OpenZFS file system. On August 3, 2011, iXsystems introduced the ''TrueNAS'' line of enterprise storage arrays, a

(NAS) system and

(SAN) device that supports the SMB, AFP, NFS,

iSCSI Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI ( ) is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP ...

, SSH, rsync and FTP/TFTP sharing protocols over

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

and

Fibre Channel Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to Server (computing), servers in storage area networks (SAN) in ...

network fabrics. TrueNAS also supports vendor-certified protocols including VMware VAAI, Microsoft CSV, ODX, and VSS, and Veeam. A custom, tool-less enclosure provides TrueNAS High Availability using dual controllers, and four user-serviceable components: disks, power supplies, fans and the controllers themselves. TrueNAS uses the OpenZFS file system in hybrid and all-flash configurations up to 10 petabytes in raw capacity. On March 15, 2020, iXsystems announced the merging of FreeNAS and TrueNAS into a unified product with two editions. ''TrueNAS CORE'' would be the

rebranded Rebranding is a marketing strategy in which a new name, term, symbol, design, concept or combination thereof is created for an established brand with the intention of developing a new, differentiated identity in the minds of consumers, investors ...

continuation of FreeNAS, as a free, open-source option, and ''TrueNAS Enterprise'' would continue as a paid, closed-source option with additional enterprise-focused features. Additionally a

port of TrueNAS was under development, to be known as TrueNAS SCALE.

FreeNAS Certified

The iXsystems ''FreeNAS Certified'' line of small and medium-sized enterprise storage arrays are designed to run the FreeNAS storage operating system and are available in 1U, 2U and 4U configurations.

TrueNAS Mini and Mini XL

The iXsystems ''TrueNAS Mini'' line of

SOHO SoHo, short for "South of Houston Street, Houston Street", is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, art installations such as The Wall ...

storage arrays are designed to run the TrueNAS storage operating system and are available in 4 bay and 8 bay configurations. Powered by TrueNAS TrueNAS has announced an Initiative called "Powered by TrueNAS" with First Partner HexOS (Eshtek Inc.), HexOS is marketed as a storage solution which targets users looking for "Simple Setup", and other NAS features made easy for installation. 󠁡󠁭󠀭󠁉󠁓󠁒󠁁󠁅󠁌󠀭󠁃󠁈󠁁󠁉

References

External links

Official website

TrueNAS website

HexOS website
{{Berkeley Software Distribution 1991 establishments in California Berkeley Software Distribution American companies established in 1991 Free software companies Software companies established in 1991