I've been toying around with a leftover server that happened to have an 8 drive cage and an array controller that does jbod. Have had Freenas installed for a few weeks. Problem is, hardware is old and I keep running into stumbling blocks trying to get really good performance out of it.
Recently I bought a Dell R710 for 377 bucks on eBay with 48GB of memory and a few 2.5" hd's and built a nice ESXi system.
I'm now looking to build a decent freenas box and keep coming back to used Dell server hardware as a possibility. Every time I try to spec a system on 2nd or 3rd gen older hardware it keeps exceeding the cost of a decent R710. I'd probably buy one with 6 3.5 drives since I don't want to get stuck in the 2.5" world. It didn't seem like there were enough cost effective upgrade options in 2.5". I even have an IBM Server Raid card that I wasn't able to use in my older hardware that could go right into a Dell system.
My needs are for 8-12TB (which includes growth) and also the ability to tinker with 10GB. That's easily handled with a R710 and with 16-32GB of memory and no HD's are probably under 300 bucks. I can't buy a MB, CPU & Memory much less a HDD capable case, ps, network, ipmi etc for that amount.
Use is to hold a mirror of local site server data .8-1.2TB (with growth), Backups of local site data 1.2-2.0TB (with growth) and a mirror of 2nd site data 6-8TB (with growth). Put one on either side of my 1GB fios and stop using cloud backup (250/year + sell my existing NAS another $200-300 and a few other gadgets I've got lying around and I've basically paid for it.
On my ESXi box I specifically bought a Gen II MB on the Dell so I could upgrade the CPU's to X56xx cpu's for more power, but I don't think FreeNAS would really need that. I did read someplace where some were not crazy about the 710 series for FreeNAS but I'm not seeing where it's terribly bad. I think there was something about non i series CPU's being a bottleneck for FreeNAS? That might be the only thing that stopped me, but honestly I'd spend more trying to put together a system any other way.
Another downside is that they are not the most energy efficient servers or cpu's so I'd pay a bit more for energy use.
Interested in what you have to say.
Roveer
Recently I bought a Dell R710 for 377 bucks on eBay with 48GB of memory and a few 2.5" hd's and built a nice ESXi system.
I'm now looking to build a decent freenas box and keep coming back to used Dell server hardware as a possibility. Every time I try to spec a system on 2nd or 3rd gen older hardware it keeps exceeding the cost of a decent R710. I'd probably buy one with 6 3.5 drives since I don't want to get stuck in the 2.5" world. It didn't seem like there were enough cost effective upgrade options in 2.5". I even have an IBM Server Raid card that I wasn't able to use in my older hardware that could go right into a Dell system.
My needs are for 8-12TB (which includes growth) and also the ability to tinker with 10GB. That's easily handled with a R710 and with 16-32GB of memory and no HD's are probably under 300 bucks. I can't buy a MB, CPU & Memory much less a HDD capable case, ps, network, ipmi etc for that amount.
Use is to hold a mirror of local site server data .8-1.2TB (with growth), Backups of local site data 1.2-2.0TB (with growth) and a mirror of 2nd site data 6-8TB (with growth). Put one on either side of my 1GB fios and stop using cloud backup (250/year + sell my existing NAS another $200-300 and a few other gadgets I've got lying around and I've basically paid for it.
On my ESXi box I specifically bought a Gen II MB on the Dell so I could upgrade the CPU's to X56xx cpu's for more power, but I don't think FreeNAS would really need that. I did read someplace where some were not crazy about the 710 series for FreeNAS but I'm not seeing where it's terribly bad. I think there was something about non i series CPU's being a bottleneck for FreeNAS? That might be the only thing that stopped me, but honestly I'd spend more trying to put together a system any other way.
Another downside is that they are not the most energy efficient servers or cpu's so I'd pay a bit more for energy use.
Interested in what you have to say.
Roveer
