When did FreeNAS become a media server?

[cyberjock]

I don't. You'd have to go through iXsystems if you want me for support. The price through iXsystems is basically a set price for a block of time. If you'd like to discuss this with me further send me a PM with your phone number and I'll contact you later today. :)

 

[zambanini]

since OT anyway:
buying from a US company really is a challenge. companies in switzerland, austria or germany ‎usually have there compliance rules, no german speaking support, longer shipping times, much higher hardware costs through delivering and customs and contracts which are not under the law of the own country. so, the arguments from emk make sense. but i doubt that ix will create a branch here.

 

[emk2203]

I can tell you that we're not interested in your data, so privacy isn't a problem. ...

I seem to have pushed a button here - but I am the wrong person to address. Personally, I care very little about all this. But the target audience doesn't.

I could also tell you that iXsystems provides support all over the world (including some companies in Germany), so support isn't a problem.

Any company with a proper IT structure should go to iXsystems. But smaller ones with less than 20 people and no dedicated IT guy? Don't think so. They just wouldn't dare to deal with support over the Atlantic, with everything that comes with it (pricing structure, time zones, languages, ...)

It is unfortunate that the US government has played this game and the IT industry worldwide has to suffer (FreeNAS and TrueNAS are great products). The harsh reality is that if you don't want to trust iXsystems for support you shouldn't be trusting our OS either. And if you are that paranoid you should probably get rid of any systems running Android, Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD because the majority of that code is from the US, and I have no doubt that some individuals that work on all of those OSes have "less than a clean history". So how much paranoia do you want to have today? ;)

As long as it's open source, it can be audited - at least in theory. I could also rely on something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux because I bet they audited everything in there quite well. But that's a digression. As I said, I am not paranoid. This is not an issue for me.

I've helped people with initial setup, and that's all. I'd help them with a parts list for a good FreeNAS box that used recommended parts without being overly expensive. Separately I'd offer to help them with actual FreeNAS configuration. I'd do everything except work with jails (those are too easy for users to blow up and I don't want to be expected to fix it). I also guaranteed the configuration for 7 days after we completed it. Some people just wanted a parts list, some people just wanted actual initial setup. But those that wanted constant support weren't my target audience. It is considerable risk to promise future support for something the user can easily break and expect you to fix (sometimes at 10+ hours of your own time because they screwed up). I can guarantee you that none of those prices were for a long-term support contract.

When I did consultation I helped people build and do initial setup for about the middle of your price range, but that was as far as I'd go. I was not going to provide long-term support (I would do one-time support tickets on request, and those fees would be negotiated at that time).

That sounds very reasonable, and this is what I was looking for. Thank you.

 

[cyberjock]

I seem to have pushed a button here - but I am the wrong person to address. Personally, I care very little about all this. But the target audience doesn't.

Not sure why you think you pushed a button. I was just answer you as "a matter of fact". We really don't want to store your data. We care about you not losing your data, but we don't actually want a copy. We're *way* too busy for that stuff.

Any company with a proper IT structure should go to iXsystems. But smaller ones with less than 20 people and no dedicated IT guy? Don't think so. They just wouldn't dare to deal with support over the Atlantic, with everything that comes with it (pricing structure, time zones, languages, ...)

I don't know about that. iXsystems has a few customers that have less than 20 employees. It's really about right-sizing and how much you are willing to pay for support/hardware/etc. Id wager that if you don't have a dedicated IT guy the business is probably incapable of figuring out that TrueNAS and ZFS is better than some Dell machine (which would also be much cheaper).

As long as it's open source, it can be audited - at least in theory. I could also rely on something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux because I bet they audited everything in there quite well. But that's a digression. As I said, I am not paranoid. This is not an issue for me.
That sounds very reasonable, and this is what I was looking for. Thank you.

Yeah, in theory is great. Let's take a walk down memory lane.... flashback to April 2014 when Heartbleed was announced. :P

The harsh reality is that anyone capable of auditing the code is certainly capable of using FreeBSD itself, and for people that can use FreeBSD it is often a better choice for almost every reason you can think of.

Look at how long Heartbleed actually existed before being caught. Look at how many years Truecrypt was basically labeled as safe despite their being no official audit of any kind. Anyone that thinks its safer because it can be audited is just fooling themselves.

When I worked in a previous career (nuclear power) if there wasn't a 3rd party unaffiliated audit of the exact version you wanted to use, you weren't using it unless your organization did the audit. We had zero developers, so that was a non-starter. :P