FreeNAS or other NAS with Infortrend ESDS S12F-G2850 ?

[swen0512]

Hello,
my name is Swen, form Germany, and i´m new in this forum.
I read a lot of threats here and do a lot of test with a FreeNAS Testsystems the last few weeks.
At the moment we have an Infortrend ESDS S12F-G2850 Raid (4xFC Ports) and a 12HDD JBOD box
with a Quantum Stornext as Filesystem.
The reason is, that we use three editing MacPro´s with Fibre channel connection direct to the controller.
The Win10 clients communicate with a win2012 Server (smb). The Server is connected with one FC Port to the Infortrend Raid Controller.
With Storenext, all clients and mac´s are able to use the same volume/data form the external Raid. It works very fine.

But we will restructure our office infrastructure, and Stornext is no option for the future.
Now I am thinking about a FreeNAS System with 10G and SMB (together with other Win10 clients) in combination with the
Infortrend ESDS S12F-G2850 Raid System.
I read a lot of articles about ZFS and the problems with Raid Controllers.
I understand the performance and safty points, not using a raid controller with ZFS.
But the Infortrend is a very powerful (and expensive) system. And i want to use it farther.
What do you think about such a combination, i´m not sure at the moment.
Is it better to use an other NAS like OMV ?

Thanks for your help and merry christmas :)
Swen

 

[tvsjr]

In my opinion, you're asking for trouble with this configuration. I can't determine what type of controller that box uses (it's probably not a proprietary card). You can pick up used 4U Supermicro chassis off eBay for sub-$1K, which are capable of 36 drives in a single box. Add in a motherboard/processor/gobs of RAM, and you have a well-supported FreeNAS box.