About the only person that truly speaks "on behalf of iX" is
@jkh. He's the CTO for iXsystems. While Dru and I are on iXsystem's payroll we aren't paid to post. The forums are not considered part of my job description, but I do help out because I've been doing it so long I don't see a reason to stop. I do post and read the forums during "normal working hours" as answers to some customer's questions are answered very well in the forum and I choose to link to some posts from time to time. It is also often helpful to both TrueNAS and FreeNAS customers if 20 people complain about a particular problem I can get a dev to look at a thread and see if we can fix it. So there are indirect benefits that help iX directly.
Dru is paid to maintain the forums, but not post. She's responsible for the forum software, keeping the forums up, and moderating as required. But her posts themselves should be considered "her own words". Obviously anything she says is probably what the manual says and the manual is bought and paid for by iXsystems. So to an extent it's her own words, but the manual says the same thing she says, so you can take that her answer is as accurate as iX would provide if you were a customer. (if she disagrees with any of this and chooses to post please take her word over mine)
My posts have been and will always be my own. I may be asked to write up on a particular subject, but I will not write nor post anything that I wouldn't want to be quoted as saying myself later on. This was made clear many months ago and hasn't changed. In essence, I'm not a propaganda machine that is bought and paid for. If I'm going to say "FreeNAS Mini's are awesome!" it's because I truly believe it. If I didn't believe it then I wouldn't be posting it. I will say nothing before I will say something that I don't agree with. While I don't expect this to change in the future, if iX was going to expect me to write up and say things that I didn't agree with we'd have bigger internal problems because that's almost being dishonest. I'm not here to sell iX hardware but I'll definitely advocate for it if I feel it is a good choice for a particular user.
I have also been a starting point for users that have a Mini and have had problems and want to pay for support. I don't mind being their first contact with iX and I can hand them off to the proper person. It's not part of my job description but it is the right thing to do regardless. ;)
Anyone that's been around a while knows I will rap on iX if I feel they did something incorrect. Case and point the discussion about the old FreeNAS Mini that didn't have ECC RAM. I was so hard on iX that the thread was ultimately deleted because quite a few people got hot and bothered by that thread. It was very much a "community vs iXsystems". Back then there was no option to get a micrATX motherboard with ECC. Of course, as soon as the new Intel Atoms came out a FreeNAS Mini was released that did support ECC RAM. To me, this was iXsystems vindicating themselves that they will do what is best. Of course, the "best" 2 years ago was a Mini that didn't have ECC support because there were no such motherboards in existence.
My actions and posts on this forum are my own and do not necessarily represent iX. If you want me to respond to your problems in an official capacity you are welcome to buy a product from iX that has support and I will be happy to assist you. Unlike the forums, iXsystem's support is about as close to "white glove" as you can get. I've been extremely impressed with how well we treat our customers. I've tried to always treat the customer the way I'd like to be treated if I were calling a company for support. So far I haven't met a customer yet that has disagreed with us on that philosophy. I'm very proud of the support team we have at iX and I'm happy to be a part of the team. Buying our products with support pretty much means we'll help you out as much or as little as you need.
iXsystems does do single-ticket support on systems that aren't ours. If you have a problem you'd like iX to resolve and don't own our hardware you can definitely contact support and/or sales to arrange for 1-time support. I will refrain from discussing what is included, cost, and such since that portion of the support is outside of my job description. I just fix your box after you break it. ;)
