Is this any good.?

[Doug Hall UK]

Hi.
I've been "playing" with FreeNAS for a few weeks now, and I love it.. I use it to BACKUP all my stuff.. (I know what you're going to say about it not being a backup solution)

I copy all my important stuff up to Dropbox, and a separate external 1Tb USB Drive.. The data I have on FreeNAS, whilst would be missed, isn't life critical. It'd just be a pain if I lost it..

Anyways, I have an old Acer M3910 i3 with 3Gb RAM (Non-ECC) 4 x 2Tb giving 4Tb usable space..
It serves my 3 Kodi boxes around the house with ease, as well as other things/functions.

I'd like to start running a couple of VMs within FreeNAS, for example a Windows 7 VM so I can RDP in from the outside world, and connect to all the plugins/jails and other home networked devices. and a Zimbra installation.

Can I get your opinion of this?
http://compadvance.co.uk/en/item/352550/HP-Proliant-MicroServer-Gen8-G1610T-4GB

• It has an internal SDCARD slot, for the FreeNAS installation.
• ECC Memory, although limited to 8Gb.
• iLo
• 4 drive bays.

Would this be as stable as stable can get for the money, and considering the (non)importance of the data.

1 other quick question.. Would you run Freenas as the main OS, with VMs inside it, or install VMWare, and run FreeNAS from within that?


Thanks for your time in advance. (I'm a geek, so happy to talk tech.)

 

[Mirfster]

Please read Hardware recommendations (read this first)
Minimal RAM is 8 GB ECC

 

[ChriZ]

HP Proliant Microserver G8 is not limited to 8GB of Ram. It can support 16GB

 

[Doug Hall UK]

HP Proliant Microserver G8 is not limited to 8GB of Ram. It can support 16GB

Thanks. Good to know. Although it says that the internal SDCARD slot is non bootable so may not be worth it after all.

 

[Doug Hall UK]

Please read Hardware recommendations (read this first)
Minimal RAM is 8 GB ECC

Thanks. Why is ECC in bold. My 3GB Acer is only a test box. The HP in the link has ECC memory hence why I'm considering it.

 

[Mirfster]

Why is ECC in bold

I meant to bold the entire response... Was trying to let you know that the configuration you linked only showed 4GB of RAM when the minimum required is 8GB. As well, if you are going to want to run a couple of VMs then that will easily put you below 8GB. At the very least fill the thing to capacity (16 GB).

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I know what you're going to say about it not being a backup solution

Using FreeNAS as a backup destination for data that lives on other systems is entirely appropriate. Putting their only copy of important data on FreeNAS and not having a backup of that is where people go wrong.