User:Maiklsdeksters/ix

iXsystems, Inc. is a privately owned American computer technology company based in San Jose, California that develops, sells and supports computing and storage solutions for small, medium and enterprise business customers. With strong ties to the FreeBSD community, the company sponsors and develops the FreeBSD-based PC-BSD open source operating system and FreeNAS open source Network Attached Storage system. iXsystems is also a frequent sponsor and attendee of Open source community events around the world.

History
iXsystems was founded in 1991 as Berkeley Software Design (BSDI) by Rick Adams and members of the University of California, Berkeley Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG), including Keith Bostic, Kirk McKusick, Mike Karels, Bill Jolitz and Donn Seeley.

BSDI's first product, BSD/386 was released in January 1992. BSD/386 was a complete Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) Unix-drived operating system with full source code for the Intel x86 processor architecture. Retailing at $995, BSD/386 was a competitive alternative to UNIX System V from AT&T which by that time cost more than $20,000 for a source code license for non-academic uses. Through the 1990s, BSD/OS was the preferred platform of large Internet Service Provider's and BSDI offered versions of BSD/OS tailored to ISP's that included support for 256-port modems with a high-performance multi-connection kernel PPP implementation.

iXsystems
The iXsystems hardware business was acquired in 2002 by OffMyServer, which reverted to the iXsystems name in 2005. In 2006, iXsystems adopted the PC-BSD project and hired its founder, Kris Moore. In 2007, iXsystems acquired FreeBSD Mall, Inc., reuniting all the portions of the original BSDi that had been spun off to Wind River Systems. In 2009, iXsystems negotiated to continue the FreeNAS project when its developers decided to move it to GNU/Linux. iXsystems introduced a comprehensive rewrite of FreeNAS in 2011 which now provides the platform for the "FreeNAS Mini" SMB NAS appliance and "TrueNAS" enterprise storage appliance. In August of 2010, BSD author Dru Lavigne joined iXsystems and in July 2013, Jordan K. Hubbard, one of the founders of the FreeBSD project, joined iXsystems as CTO.

Servers
iXsystems designs, sells and supports custom x86 servers for workgroups through data centers with a focus on support for the FreeBSD operating system. The company relies on partnerships with hardware vendors Intel, Supermicro, Western Digital and LSI Corporation combined with on-staff FreeBSD developers to achieve this goal. All iXsystems servers are subjected to a three day burn-in process to reduce returns and are available with GNU/Linux as an alternative operating system.

Storage Appliances
The iXsystems TrueNAS line of storage appliances is a unified file and block storage solution with High Availability options targeted at enterprise users. The company's FreeNAS Mini, 1U and 2U Certified FreeNAS Storage appliances are targeted at home and small business FreeNAS users.

Community Involvement
With its roots in the original U.C. Berkeley CSRG project, iXsystems is active in the contemporary BSD community through:


 * FreeBSD Foundation Donations
 * FreeBSD Source Contributions
 * PC-BSD/TrueOS Development
 * FreeNAS Development
 * FreeBSD News Editorial
 * Operation of the FreeBSD Mall book, software and promotional item store

Events
iXsystems is a regular sponsor and attendee of open source events including BSDCan, AsiaBSDCon, EuroBSDcon, NYCBSDCon, OSCON, FOSDEM, the Southern California Linux Expo, Linuxfest Northwest, Ohio LinuxFest, SouthEast LinuxFest and DEF CON.

In 2008, iXsystems hosted the first MeetBSD California biennial unconference at the Google headquarters and continued with 2010, 2012 and 2014 events at Hacker Dojo, Yahoo! and Western Digital respectively.