Is the FreeNAS Mini currently a good purchase?

[Jon M]

I'm hovering over the purchase button for the FreeNAS Mini - the form factor and specs are pretty much ideal for me. I'm just curious how up to date the hardware is, it seems like it's been around for a while with no changes. I also noted some concern over the reliability of the motherboard used in it.

So, given that I'm looking for a FreeNAS build with that form factor, performance level, and power consumption, is the FreeNAS mini a good purchase right now? For the same money, could I build something better myself using more recent and possibly better hardware? Is it likely that the FreeNAS mini will get a refresh in the near future?

I don't feel strongly about building vs. buying, either works for me. I'm also not in a big hurry, I won't fully switch everything over to it until at least a month after FreeNAS 10 is released, so if some great new hardware is on the horizon then I can probably wait for it!

Thanks!

 

[Ericloewe]

Honestly, the motherboard it uses has had some issues recently, which have not been fully resolved.

As for pricing, you can get cheaper, but the C2750 is still better for many applications than a low-end Skylake processor. A Xeon would be unequivocally better, but probably more expensive.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

If you're looking at the regular mini (4 bays) and not the XL (8 bays), then you might also consider a Dell PowerEdge T20.

 

[Arwen]

I have the FreeNAS Mini, (4 bay). If I had the choice when I bought it, I might have gone with
the 8 bay model. I ended up buying a dual SATA enclosure with eSATA port. I could have used
spare slots in the XL, (8 bay), model for my backup disks.

For me, it's worked out well. But, I recognize that some people have had trouble.