FreeNAS is an open source operating system that allows nearly any hardware serve as a network-attached storage device. It was developed by iXsystems.
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IBM Storwize (now part of FlashSystems)
Score 7.0 out of 10
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IBM Storwize is a family of recognized all-flash and hybrid storage solutions designed to support the virtualization needs and application workloads of mid-sized enterprises.
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.
This stuff runs! Hot, cold not wet, but you know where your data is. Reliably in the cabinet turning your data for the next customer request. You need dedupe, get the flash drive models. Long archives with spinning disks can help with all the data modeling the analysts do. Keep up with the dba’s constant need for speed with all-flash! You will get what you pay for.
Data processing and IO. The Storwize devices are very resilient in how they process data and do not have a drop in IO when errors occur (common errors such as disk failures and lost paths).
Storage efficiency management. We are able to use multiple efficiency techniques such as thin provisioning and data reduction to reduce our budget footprint.
Easy to use interfaces. Creating a volume and mapping to a host has proven to be a very easy process and makes onboarding less stressful for our team.
As a business partner looking to provide services to keep the uptime of the Storwize, I would like to have the capability to pull reports from IBM Storage Insights to assist my clients in managing their system through it's lifecycle.
More knowledge out there for partners to best integrate IBM Storwize with IBM Power i. This seems to be lacking in communication from IBM.
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.
IBM Storwize is a part of a family that is complemented by the products listed. In many negotiations, involving storage is our workhorse to ensure several businesses thanks to its balanced cost and all the benefits that we offer.
I would like to highlight the most positive aspect I have seen in the products of the IBM Storwize family, and it is the ROI that we can choose when we offer real-time compression with the IBM V7000 family. In truth, this feature is excellent, and we have seen how customers save storage resources, rack space, power and management.
