Hey folks. And thank in advance for what I am sure will be great advice.
I come from a tech background and have run a Windows Domain at home since NT4.0, and converted to what became the essentials line over the years.
Usually I have had a plethora od little servers that do the job hanging about the house at various times. But as I have moved into more consulting roles in my work the need for all the different equipment has slowly gone away, but I do have a lot of pictures, music and other personal stuff my wife and I store.
I started with the HP MediaSmart 510 (?) and then upgraded that to run Home Server 2010. I then migrated to a HP N40L and Server Essentials 2012, the upgraded again to HP N54L and Server Essentials 2012 R2. (With a Pair of N40L's) running VM ware for the rest of my needs).
Recently I was about to upgrade again to Server Essentials 2016 but all the features that I used are no longer supported or only available in the full server. This forced me to start looking for other options. As a result I recently replaced all of my home network with Ubiquiti gear including a USG that now handlesa number of the features that Windows Homeserver/Essentials handled.
This means that it is now time tostart looking at the replacement of the old server (the N54L is pretty long in the tooth). I have just upgraded my wife's PC and have a spare motherboard (not a server board), Ram, casse and other components and would like to build a FreeNAS to take over the serving of teh files so that I can 'shrink' the Windows server and move it to a virtual server on the FreeNAS for domain control, office365 management, and Windows patching for the other windows devices in the house (a couple of PC's, 2 surface tablets and two laptops).
So what I have is the following:
Gigabyte GA-H170 Gaming 3 Motherboard
6th generation i5 quag core CPU (Water cooled cos I live in Brisbane, Australia and theambient temp is hot)
32GB or Ram
2x 120 GB WD Green SSD M.2 drives
I will also be purchasing some WD Red HDD's for the primary storage, just not sure of the exact needs. The current Windows server has 4x WD Red 4GB in a raid 10 and is about 80% full. I have 6 SATA ports available on the motherboard to get the large storage onto.
I was not sure if a should grab a couple of small USB 3.0 drives for the install and use the SSD's for read/write caching, or just install FreeNAS to the SSD's.
Primary use is as a Fileserver and backup location. It will also then back up core informatio to the cloud (taking this off the Windows server as it si now 'flakey' with Azure backups and Server 2012 R2). Will also need to run the Windows server as a VM.
What advice do you have for me please.
I come from a tech background and have run a Windows Domain at home since NT4.0, and converted to what became the essentials line over the years.
Usually I have had a plethora od little servers that do the job hanging about the house at various times. But as I have moved into more consulting roles in my work the need for all the different equipment has slowly gone away, but I do have a lot of pictures, music and other personal stuff my wife and I store.
I started with the HP MediaSmart 510 (?) and then upgraded that to run Home Server 2010. I then migrated to a HP N40L and Server Essentials 2012, the upgraded again to HP N54L and Server Essentials 2012 R2. (With a Pair of N40L's) running VM ware for the rest of my needs).
Recently I was about to upgrade again to Server Essentials 2016 but all the features that I used are no longer supported or only available in the full server. This forced me to start looking for other options. As a result I recently replaced all of my home network with Ubiquiti gear including a USG that now handlesa number of the features that Windows Homeserver/Essentials handled.
This means that it is now time tostart looking at the replacement of the old server (the N54L is pretty long in the tooth). I have just upgraded my wife's PC and have a spare motherboard (not a server board), Ram, casse and other components and would like to build a FreeNAS to take over the serving of teh files so that I can 'shrink' the Windows server and move it to a virtual server on the FreeNAS for domain control, office365 management, and Windows patching for the other windows devices in the house (a couple of PC's, 2 surface tablets and two laptops).
So what I have is the following:
Gigabyte GA-H170 Gaming 3 Motherboard
6th generation i5 quag core CPU (Water cooled cos I live in Brisbane, Australia and theambient temp is hot)
32GB or Ram
2x 120 GB WD Green SSD M.2 drives
I will also be purchasing some WD Red HDD's for the primary storage, just not sure of the exact needs. The current Windows server has 4x WD Red 4GB in a raid 10 and is about 80% full. I have 6 SATA ports available on the motherboard to get the large storage onto.
I was not sure if a should grab a couple of small USB 3.0 drives for the install and use the SSD's for read/write caching, or just install FreeNAS to the SSD's.
Primary use is as a Fileserver and backup location. It will also then back up core informatio to the cloud (taking this off the Windows server as it si now 'flakey' with Azure backups and Server 2012 R2). Will also need to run the Windows server as a VM.
What advice do you have for me please.