Can I use freeNAS with Dell Poweredge SC400

[Sunny]

I have installed freeNAS on USB and it works great. But Now I have few questions with my server.
The configuration is below I think
Processor support Pentium 4 2.26GHz or higher (533FSB or 800FSB)
Celeron 2.0GHz or higher (400FSB)
Chipset Intel® 875P
RAM type ECC DDR-333 SDRAM or ECC DDR-400 SDRAM
Ram min/max 128MB-4GB
Disk IDE 40, 80, 120GB
SATA 120, 250GB
SCSI 36, 73GB
Number of hard disk 2x1.0”: Non-hot swap
drive bays
Number of external 1x3.5”: Floppy
drive bays 2x5.25” for CD-ROM, DVD, tape backup
Availability ECC memory
Server Management OS based monitoring
Drive controller Embedded 2xATA100
Opt. SCSI
I/O 3x32-bit/33MHz 5v
Opt. RAID Opt. hardware CERC IDE RAID
Opt. software Promise SATA RAID
LOM 1x Gigabit
Chassis Mini-tower

What I want to do is RAID 5 on this server . What do I need to do? Do I need a RAID controller Card, I have upgraded the memory to 4GB.
Other Important feature I would like to configure is mirrored boot, HOT Spare, IPMI.
Question is Is this server good or I need to buy a new one? If I can use this server then how can get all the features with minimal cost? Ofcourse I have 3TB 3 drives which I would Like to use.

Thanks for your help.
Sunny

 

[warri]

First you have to decide which file system to use. For ZFS only 4GB of RAM is rather tight and not recommended.
This leaves you with UFS, which afaik supports a software RAID5. For this setup you don't need a RAID controller.
But I'm not sure if UFS software RAIDs actually support hot spares.

If you want to go with a hardware RAID you need a controller.

 

[Sunny]

I can increase the memory to 8 GB Memory which is not a problem. I need to transfer large files, music and subsonic media player. So I guess need to use ZFS. what is the cheapest card available for RAID. Just to let you know I have another NAS - Thecus which works fine but after buying that I was reading about FreeNAS and got really interested. Now I am thinking if I can setup FreeNAS as primary and then Thecus NAS as backup of FreeNAS that way I can play around and learn new things as I go.
Thanks for your quick response.

 

[Sunny]

Also very new to Linux so lot of learning curve on tuning kernel , etc but I think its a good start. Even I was hoping I can put owncloud.

 

[warri]

Are you sure about the RAM? Because you said earlier "Ram min/max 128MB-4GB".
If you go for ZFS, get 1 GB RAM per TB disk space. You do not need a RAID card, since ZFS uses software raid (called RaidZ1, RaidZ2 or RaidZ3) . Only if you don't have enough SATA ports, you will need to get an adapter card, for example this one: http://forums.freenas.org/threads/confused-about-that-lsi-card-join-the-crowd.11901/

You generally don't need to tune or recompile the kernel in FreeNAS, it's all pretty well set up from the beginning. Now there is even an owncloud plugin available.