HP Proliant

[pakoboy]

Hello,

I'm thinking of buying a old server instead of building one by myself but u have a few questions.
I will be buying the Proliant ML350 G5, will i be able to install freenas on it? And in the specification http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12475_div/12475_div.PDF
it says that i can put hdd of max 500GB. Will i havet installing freenas use larger hdd?

 

[HoneyBadger]

While it would work, and supports a good quantity of RAM when paired with a 5300 or 5400 series Xeon, the E200i controller on the board, from my recollection, does not support the ability to do drive passthrough. This is important to ZFS as it expects direct drive access, rather than a bunch of single-drive RAID0 sets. It may also have a firmware limitation on drive size. HP likes to do silly things with their controllers.

If you use an add-on controller, it would alleviate both the drive passthrough issue and the maximum size limitation; but I'd suggest checking out a different model instead.

 

[pakoboy]

thank you for you reply. I am not sure if i want to buy extra thing. I was hoping to use it as it is.

 

[no_connection]

There are better things than ML350G5 for this.
I have two, one as ESXi server and one as a workstation (with modded PCIe slot).
To run FreeNAS you will have to use 8GB+ RAM. Usually meaning 4 or 8 modules drawing 5W each.
You should also mod it with extra fans as two of the passive heatsinks get very hot ("don't want to touch them" hot).
Expect it to draw 200W or so. My ESXi box hovers around there with 6 memory slots occupied.
E200i is a bit flakey in my experience so you can't trust that you can read it in another box or move it with data intact.
Not to mention that it is big and heavy.

What do you want to use it for?

 

[pakoboy]

my many goal is to use it as a file server