Hi all, first time poster, long time lurker. I've been using zfs since the release of OpenSolaris 2008.05, and although much of my zfs experience is OpenSolaris, and more recently, zfsonlinux, I've also built several FreeNAS 9.x systems, and have built a couple of test FreeNAS 10 nightly build systems (which looks niiiice). This is just to say that I'm quite familiar with zfs, and I'm also well aware of the FreeNAS minimum requirements.
I've built systems as large as 360TB with 90 drives, but often I have smaller clients where a minimally sized system suffices. The hardware recommendations guide is great for the medium to large systems, and for the smallest systems, as far as I can tell the Lenovo TS140 and Dell T20 systems are the least expensive real server hardware that meets the FreeNAS minimum requirements and comes frequently recommended in the forums. There are great deals for both of these machines regularly on Amazon ($250 to $350 depending on i3 or Xeon, need to add more RAM, and obviously drives), and occasionally you can stumble on one of them for $200. Anyway, this is great, but both of these machines surfaced in early 2014. Server hardware doesn't move at light speed, but I was wondering if anyone had stumbled on a more recent equivalent to these two machines. There is a TS150 and a T30, from Lenovo and Dell, respectively, but I can't see those at anywhere near the prices you can find the TS140 and T20 for.
Anyway, just curious. And either way, would it make sense to add a shout out to these two systems (or their modern equivalents) on the hardware recommendations guide? That guide is very helpful (I've even used it for non-FreeNAS systems just so I didn't have to spend all day sifting through SuperMicro's site), but unless someone wants to correct me, I think the cheapest thing you could build based on that guide would cost a couple multiples of the TS140/T20 systems, so it might be worth pointing those out as the bare minimum entry level systems in the guide itself, assuming my impression that these are generally regarded as acceptable hardware for FreeNAS is correct. I think plenty of the home users trying to cobble together old desktops or random parts off Newegg could easily afford these systems, so it could be useful to have a clear "bare minimum, cheapest system" to recommend, a description of those systems' limitations, and also to have something to compare the better builds to in terms of additional capabilities and features.
I've built systems as large as 360TB with 90 drives, but often I have smaller clients where a minimally sized system suffices. The hardware recommendations guide is great for the medium to large systems, and for the smallest systems, as far as I can tell the Lenovo TS140 and Dell T20 systems are the least expensive real server hardware that meets the FreeNAS minimum requirements and comes frequently recommended in the forums. There are great deals for both of these machines regularly on Amazon ($250 to $350 depending on i3 or Xeon, need to add more RAM, and obviously drives), and occasionally you can stumble on one of them for $200. Anyway, this is great, but both of these machines surfaced in early 2014. Server hardware doesn't move at light speed, but I was wondering if anyone had stumbled on a more recent equivalent to these two machines. There is a TS150 and a T30, from Lenovo and Dell, respectively, but I can't see those at anywhere near the prices you can find the TS140 and T20 for.
Anyway, just curious. And either way, would it make sense to add a shout out to these two systems (or their modern equivalents) on the hardware recommendations guide? That guide is very helpful (I've even used it for non-FreeNAS systems just so I didn't have to spend all day sifting through SuperMicro's site), but unless someone wants to correct me, I think the cheapest thing you could build based on that guide would cost a couple multiples of the TS140/T20 systems, so it might be worth pointing those out as the bare minimum entry level systems in the guide itself, assuming my impression that these are generally regarded as acceptable hardware for FreeNAS is correct. I think plenty of the home users trying to cobble together old desktops or random parts off Newegg could easily afford these systems, so it could be useful to have a clear "bare minimum, cheapest system" to recommend, a description of those systems' limitations, and also to have something to compare the better builds to in terms of additional capabilities and features.