Linkman
Patron
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2015
- Messages
- 219
This system does not have IPMI to remotely mount an ISO, so you might actually need to burn a CD of the FreeNAS installer to get the OS into the system to begin with, but once installed, I don't think the CD will be very useful. There really is no use taking it out though, you don't need that spot for anything unless you are going to add more drives than what you already told us about. As for the SSD boot drive, just stick it anywhere it will fit. Solid State drives don't even need to be mounted. I ran a system for two years with the SSD just dangling from the end of the power cable. It doesn't look pretty but if you want to make it look pretty, you can get an adapter bracket to put it in the CD bay instead of just pulling the CD drive and leaving a hole.
Exactly this, there is some remote management via Intel AMT, but nothing like IPMI on the ML10 Gen9 unless you spring for the Xeon model (No idea if upgrading an existing i3 model to a Xeon would unlock that or not).
The Skylake i3 here has plenty of grunt for the use cases mentioned here, and I just used a Velcro tie to hold the SSD in one of the empty HDD bays so it wouldn't bounce around when moving the box.
At $169 it's almost a no brainer. :)