BUILD Older HW... Will It Work?

[josyd]

I have an old rackmount server gathering dust. It's not the newest hardware by far, but I'm curious how well it would run FreeNAS. The only plugin I plan to use is Plex, so nothing too crazy. I will be purchasing 4 3TB Reds in addition to the 2 3TB Greens I have now. HW specs listed below.
How would this run in comparisson to say, something purchased now with ~32GB DDR3.

• SuperMicro X7QCE​
• 4x Intel Xeon E7340​
• 96GB DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM Memory - 24 x 4 GB Sticks​
• 2x 1000w Redundant PSU​

 

[jgreco]

I expect that it may not be super fast at CIFS and will burn a lot of watts, other than that, it should be an unstoppable tank of a server.

For a ZFS system, RAM is awesome and for jails/Plex/etc cores are helpful. A direct comparison is difficult; you have a departmental fileserver class server board. Trying to compare a tank to a sports car. It's basically a matter of how you use it. Didn't the Top Gear guys put Clarkson in a sportscar up against a tank, and he thought "no problem" getting away from the tank, yet he got it in the end?

It is really very much like that. Your tank will never do 200MPH but it'll crush cars that do like they were bugs.

 

[cyberjock]

It is really very much like that. Your tank will never do 200MPH but it'll crush cars that do like they were bugs.

I laughed so hard I got dizzy!

 

[jgreco]

I'm so happy to have amused you. It wasn't clear exactly how to explain the essence of the issue without a comparison.