Devil’s in the Details for NAS Storage Says @iXsystems | @CloudExpo

The devil made him do it. Or maybe it's that the devil is in the details for Matt Olander, Chief Science Officer of iXsystems and a long-time contributor to FreeBSD. A red devil icon plays a prominent role in this NAS storage company's branding and image, which is open souce “in everything we do,” according to the company. The company now has decades of experience “producing rock-solid solutions on an open source foundation. With more than1,000 clients, we have a proven history of building and delivering the right solution every time - for open source and beyond,” the company says. We thought we'd find out what Matt has to say about open source and the state of NAS storage today: Cloud Computing Journal: What advantages does NAS storage bring as cloud computing continues to grow? Matt Olander: Network Attached Storage (NAS) allows new or existing cloud-computing platforms to easily extend storage capacity as service offerings grow. Since FreeNAS & TrueNAS offer both block & file access, no matter what architecture a deployment is using, our NAS solution can easily integrate into the chosen environment. CCJ: What advantages have you seen Open Source provide for your customers? Matt: There are many advantages offered by leveraging Open Source. Using Open Source alleviates one of the main problems with current storage solutions, which is vendor lock-in. By deploying something that is based on an Open Source solution, a client is free to explore other options and can rest assured knowing that they have other options at all times during the lifecycle of their investment. Using Open Source can reduce costs by eliminating or reducing the proprietary licensing fees of a commercial, closed-source solution. An Open Source solution also typically means that there are more people looking at the source-code. This means that the Open Source alternative can be more secure as well as higher quality, since more people are using, trying, and reviewing the software. CCJ: What sort of trends do you see as cloud, Big Data, and the IoT grow? For example, the growth of solid-state storage. Matt: According to Science Daily last year, 90% of the world's data has been generated over the last 2 years. This is not slowing down and in fact, as more people and devices access the Internet, the need for storing and analyzing that data is growing. We are moving into a time where devices at home will communicate with devices at work and even devices on the consumers body, in the form of wearable technology. All of these devices will benefit from a centralized location to share and store data. Storage will get faster and cheaper while the need for that storage will continue to grow.

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