I have an older ReadyNAS X600 that I'm looking to retire. Infrant basically used a crap "squirrel cage" fan that's way, way too loud. I replaced it, and it's still way, way too loud. Newer Infrant boxes use big, standard PC fans.

Infrant's web forum is sweet and if you've got a software issue, they're excellent at supporting you. For example, I bought a cheapo UPS which turned out not to be on their supported list and wasn't recognized out of the box. I posted, they asked me to press the button to send them my logs, and within a week I had a patch and it worked great. That's service!

For hardware issues, it's less clear that Infrant is great. They sent me a new fan, but the core fact was that they had a design defect and weren't prepared to do much about it. They had different fan issues with later boxes that seem to finally have been worked out. It's been quite a while, though, since they've announced a new product. Maybe something new around the corner?

What next for me then? I'm probably going to by a major-branded Windows Home Server, throw away Windows, and run OpenSolaris or something. The WHS boxes have much faster CPUs than the Infrant which should lead to great performance. The WHS license isn't worth much, but I'll at least play with it. (Ttemptation: buy a WHS server with a single hard drive, pull that drive, and add four clean ones. If/when there's a hardware problem requiring going through telephone support, I can downgrade the server to its factory state such that they won't say "we don't support that.")