I have two N54L AMD powered Microservers. One runs FreeNAS (and MiniDLNA in a jail). The other runs a low bandwidth DNS server, mail server and web server. I am concerned that both machines are getting old and have had occasional glitches on starting, possibly hardware related. It seems sensible to replace both with one machine (though I prefer my router/firewall on separate hardware out of ignorance probably).
Which (and why!) is the best approach? Should I use a FreeNAS server with the other functions virtualised, or a Linux server (presumably with some form of RAID) with virtualised FreeNAS. I expect in the latter case I would use separate disks for FreeNAS, and I might want hardware RAID otherwise the hardware seems to be about the same in either case.
Is either intrinsically more reliable?
Speed is not really a consideration until and unless I get a better Internet connection (currently about 500kb/s both ways).
Which (and why!) is the best approach? Should I use a FreeNAS server with the other functions virtualised, or a Linux server (presumably with some form of RAID) with virtualised FreeNAS. I expect in the latter case I would use separate disks for FreeNAS, and I might want hardware RAID otherwise the hardware seems to be about the same in either case.
Is either intrinsically more reliable?
Speed is not really a consideration until and unless I get a better Internet connection (currently about 500kb/s both ways).