Dell PowerEdge T130

[MatthewE]

I’ve been thinking about building my own FreeNAS server for awhile now, but recently noticed that I could get a Dell PowerEdge T130 for a decent price from Dell.

Right now I just want something to store all my family photos and hold back-ups of the various computers in the house. I may someday install Plex and store movies, but I am slow about doing things like that.

I am planning on buying WD Reds. Probably two at first in a mirror as one vdev and then when needed add another two in a mirror as a second vdev.

I am thinking of a T130 with the following options:
Intel Pentium G4600 3.6GHz
16GB (1x16GB) 2400MT/s DDR4 ECC UDIMM
No RAID with Embedded SATA
On-Board LOM 1GBE Dual Port (BCM5720 GbE LOM)
iDRAC8, Basic

Right now this works out to about $330 without the drives, which seems much cheaper than what I could build myself. Would this be a good choice for a home FreeNAS?

Some questions:
I’ve seen some concerns about Broadcom NICs on the forum. Should I be concerned? I can upgrade to an Intel Ethernet I350 DP 1Gb Server Adapter for $140. Or I could buy an Intel I210-T1 Network Adapter E0X95AA for $47 from Amazon.

I could also choose iDrac8, Basic with Dedicated NIC. Would I want a dedicated NIC for iDrac8? What would that let me do or not do?

Anything else I should be thinking about?

Thank,
Matt

 

[Chris Moore]

Right now this works out to about $330 without the drives, which seems much cheaper than what I could build myself. Would this be a good choice for a home FreeNAS?

It looks pretty good for a starter system, unless I missed something, but it doesn't have room for many drives. That isn't so much of a problem if you are willing to consider some modifications later, if you need more storage. There is a similar system from HP that some users here have started with and then moved the system board to a different chassis when they decided to get more drives.
There is nothing I see that would keep you from doing FreeNAS on that and Plex is great, jump in, I got the life membership on it.
The iDRAC having a dedicated NIC, if it still works the way it used to work, would let you remote in even if the system is off or in some fault condition. The older iDRAC solutions that did not have a dedicated NIC did not provide the same level of connectivity and remote manageability. I am not familiar with the recent advancements though because the most recent one I have used is the iDRAC6 and we didn't buy the module to enable some of the more advanced features that you can have. I imagine that the 'basic' doesn't give you things like remote media, but if you pay the extra fee for the advanced module you can remotely mount ISO files to boot the system from and install software. Things that are build-in on the IPMI that Supermicro includes at no extra charge, Dell and HP both charge extra to activate.