FreeNAS vs. IBM AIX

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
FreeNAS
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
FreeNAS is an open source operating system that allows nearly any hardware serve as a network-attached storage device. It was developed by iXsystems.N/A
IBM AIX
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
IBM AIX (for Advanced Interactive eXecutive) is a Unix operating system, developed, offered and supported by IBM.N/A
Pricing
FreeNASIBM AIX
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FreeNASIBM AIX
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Best Alternatives
FreeNASIBM AIX
Small Businesses
DiskStation
DiskStation
Score 9.1 out of 10
Ubuntu
Ubuntu
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
DiskStation
DiskStation
Score 9.1 out of 10
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
DiskStation
DiskStation
Score 9.1 out of 10
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
FreeNASIBM AIX
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(7 ratings)
9.6
(11 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
7.5
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
FreeNASIBM AIX
Likelihood to Recommend
iXsystems
FreeNAS is well suited for most storage serving scenarios, whether it be for an office file server, backup destinations, data replication across the internet, or as backend storage for virtual machines. It can serve various types of clients via a plethora of standard protocols and can easily integrate with existing infrastructure using LDAP authentication and so on. It's pretty simple to use (it helps to have at least a basic understanding of the underlying technologies) and almost maintenance-free. One scenario that springs to mind that it may not be appropriate for (yet) is as S3 storage. However, S3 functionality was added in a recent release and may have improved greatly since then. I'm sure it will eventually work very well for this.
Read full review
IBM
IBM AIX is a very powerful and extremely stable operating environment. It is well suited for applications that are business critical and cannot tolerate outages. It is best used to address large enterprise level application needs where stability and scalability are of paramount importance. IBM AIX is less useful for small enterprises.
Read full review
Pros
iXsystems
  • The FreeNAS web interface is modern looking. It makes tasks like provisioning drives into raid volumes easy.
  • The ZFS raid option allows you to add in an SSD as a cache drive to increase performance.
Read full review
IBM
  • The newer version of IBM AIX allows to apply new patches without system restart
  • IBM AIX was the first operating system to have a journaling file system and have enhanced software features.
  • IBM AIX will have good vendor support 24/7 and will ensure reliability to the customers and more performance when compared to it peers.
Read full review
Cons
iXsystems
  • Not good for beginners as it requires deep understanding of networking and storage.
  • Most of the good and required features are not available in free version.
Read full review
IBM
  • A lot of the built-in commands have not been updated in years. If you're used to some fancy CLI options in Linux, you may be out of luck with AIX.
  • Out of the box, you cannot run open-source Linux utilities on AIX. There is a toolbox you can install, however, it's not the same versions as you would get in different Linux flavors.
  • Tab completion for files and Up arrow to re-run previous commands don't work out of the box without running a Korn shell. A small annoyance, but one that catches me every time!
Read full review
Support Rating
iXsystems
There were some things that can be found by other users on forums and Google and some things that were not.
Read full review
IBM
There is lots of documentation out there for AIX. On the times I've had to address a hardware issue, IBM's support has been great.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
iXsystems
FreeNAS effectively uses all resources really well and it is highly recommended for in premises NAS. It has unlimited ROI as it is really free and open-source. The only payment we need to pay is when we need any support from those guys. FreeNAS helps us to effectively do our work with the legacy systems as it manages all the components really well. FreeNAS although rebranded to TrueNAS will still be there until our legacy systems run.
Read full review
IBM
Standard Linux distributions which are used more as commodity servers do not offer the ease of scale and growth that we see with our Aix implementations. IBM owning the HW and SW portions of the stack allows for tighter integrations and better performance windows.
Read full review
Return on Investment
iXsystems
  • Low-Cost Network Attached Storage
  • Provides additional network storage to support client & business operations
  • FreeNAS secures our data using custom encryption keys
Read full review
IBM
  • IBM AIX on Power hardware has been the backbone of our most critical applications.
  • The versatility of IBM AIX virtualization has been extremely useful, scalable, and provided configuration with redundant dual VIO servers.
  • IBM AIX is not Linux so special skill sets are needed to actually manage the systems. Finding qualified engineers can often be a challenge
Read full review
ScreenShots