iXsystems, a maker of NAS devices and a player in the SME space, might fly under the radar here in Europe, but they’re eager to change that. Brett Davis, the director of iXsystems, shared at a recent IT Press Tour in Silicon Valley that interest in their systems is growing quickly across the Atlantic. “Europe leads in adopting open-source solutions, especially in data storage,” he noted.
Their TrueNAS operating system, which has seen over 500,000 downloads, is available for free on any server hardware. It’s built on OpenZFS and offers features typically found in pricier NAS systems. “The community version of TrueNAS has really taken off,” Davis said. It helps spread the word about their products, leading organizations to purchase their integrated and cost-effective arrays, which come with built-in ransomware protection.
Earlier this year, they launched the TrueNAS H30, a 2U array featuring high availability, with a total capacity of up to 720TB. It’s equipped with the latest Fangtooth version 25.04 of their OS. Though Fangtooth won’t roll out in systems until April 2025, a beta version is currently available. This new OS introduces support for RoCE (RDMA over converged Ethernet), enhancing network access to memory via NFS and iSCSI protocols.
Davis emphasized one key benefit: “RoCE allows for direct communication between storage and AI servers using Nvidia GPUs. We’ll integrate that feature later.” Fangtooth also offers rapid data deduplication, external redundancy, and the ability to handle containerized applications, alongside VMware and Veeam data cloning. “Storage for Veeam backups and VMware machines is driving our sales,” he said. Their latest features streamline data access and network efficiency, enabling operations to be up to ten times faster.
For running containerized applications, the system builds on TrueNAS’s long-standing use of FreeBSD and its Jails. Last year, TrueNAS Core was downloadable, but it now coexists with TrueNAS Scale, based on Debian Linux, which has transitioned to support LXC Linux kernel containers.
iXsystems provides a range of arrays, from 2.5PB to 25PB. The H30 features dual controllers but utilizes the second purely for emergency failover, not load balancing. “Our tests showed that using both controllers simultaneously doesn’t enhance high availability,” Davis explained. Reliability stems from using SSDs through NVMe ports, each linked to a controller. Each controller packs 20 Xeon CPU cores and 256GB of RAM, with connectivity options offering flexible throughput.
The TrueNAS line consists of five families. The F series targets high performance, featuring input/output sharing, but with no redundancy. Extending these arrays can reach a maximum of 10PB with NVMe connectivity. The M series is all about high capacity, allowing 25PB through external shelves. Then there’s the R series, a single-controller option that can reach around 5PB, as well as the Mini series designed for desktop use with four HDDs and 10Gbps connectivity.
Davis said, “We aspire to develop arrays that hit 100PB.” They’re currently tackling two projects to make that happen, one focusing on clusters with numerous controllers and the other on enhancing the power of individual controllers.
