So I'm long overdue for an upgrade to my NAS. I've been running it for quite some time now, and it's currently on an old MSI 870A-G54 board with an AMD Sempron 140 unlocked to a Phenom II x4 945. My drives are old, full and beginning to have bad sectors.
I also have a C2550D4I board that was in an ESXi server. The board crapped out on me, and I'm finally getting around to RMAing it. I'm debating using this board as my new freenas build.
My current thoughts:
Motherboard: C2550D4I
RAM: 32GB Crucial ECC RAM
HDs: 4TB WD Red Drives x2 (others TBD)
Case: Either Norco Mini-ITX Case or SilverStone DS380B
Controller: M1015 flashed to LSI BIOS
Primary usage is general file server as well as a iSCSI target for an ESXi box. My current configuration is 4 1TB drives in a RAID10 configuration for iSCSI and a 3-disk RAIDZ for my media/files. My goal is to improve performance while offering the maximum amount of storage for my data with 8 drives.
Questions:
1. Should I consider a SSD for log/caching? I've heard mixed review on these, and I really don't know much about the pros/cons of running them.
2. Am I overloading the RAM for my needs? I'm currently running 16GB on my setup, and from what I can tell it is utilizing all of it. If it's overkill, I could save some $ here by only loading 16GB but have no problem going higher if necessary for performance.
3. Any feedback on either case would be great if anyone has practical experience with it.
I also have a C2550D4I board that was in an ESXi server. The board crapped out on me, and I'm finally getting around to RMAing it. I'm debating using this board as my new freenas build.
My current thoughts:
Motherboard: C2550D4I
RAM: 32GB Crucial ECC RAM
HDs: 4TB WD Red Drives x2 (others TBD)
Case: Either Norco Mini-ITX Case or SilverStone DS380B
Controller: M1015 flashed to LSI BIOS
Primary usage is general file server as well as a iSCSI target for an ESXi box. My current configuration is 4 1TB drives in a RAID10 configuration for iSCSI and a 3-disk RAIDZ for my media/files. My goal is to improve performance while offering the maximum amount of storage for my data with 8 drives.
Questions:
1. Should I consider a SSD for log/caching? I've heard mixed review on these, and I really don't know much about the pros/cons of running them.
2. Am I overloading the RAM for my needs? I'm currently running 16GB on my setup, and from what I can tell it is utilizing all of it. If it's overkill, I could save some $ here by only loading 16GB but have no problem going higher if necessary for performance.
3. Any feedback on either case would be great if anyone has practical experience with it.