How much RAM?

[Raident]

I'm trying to decide whether to go with the base model which comes with 36GB of RAM, or to get the upgraded model which comes with 72GB of RAM. The base model costs $300, the RAM upgrade costs $100.

Both the base model and the upgraded model have 4 drive bays.

 

[gpsguy]

Base model of what? I really doubt you can get a 36Gb upgrade for $100. Are the goods, hot?

We recommend ECC RAM in your FreeNAS box. Consult the manual for RAM requirements.

 

[vegaman]

If the server supports 72GB of RAM I'd assume it's registered and I haven't seen non-ECC R-DIMMs before.

Either way that's rather cheap though.

 

[Raident]

The cheapness is the main reason why I'm even willing to consider using one of these machines as a file server - after all, there's only 4 drive bays and no RAID controller (unless if you count ICH10R fake RAID), but considering the alternatives at this price point - mostly ARM11-based devices, maybe Atom if I'm lucky - I'm not complaining.

The RAM itself is actually not that special - the 72GB is actually achieved through 18x 4GB DIMMs. The seller does specify that they are ECC RDIMMs, but they're not super high capacity or anything.

As for the what the servers themselves are, here's the 36GB version: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Powere...689179?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item41776fca1b

And the 72GB version: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Powere...072295?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item3cd525f4e7

There's other configurations as well, most notably the ones with Westmere 6-core CPUs. As for whether the goods are hot, well, it's hard to say. What I've heard is that these are Facebook decommisioned a whole whack of these servers from their datacenters earlier this year and sold them to liquidators at bargain-basement prices, but of course I have no way of confirming that.

 

[cyberjock]

I've read about those. They might work well as a FreeNAS server. Not sure if they are fully FreeBSD compatible though. Notice that FreeBSD is not listed on the supported OSes. I'd be a little wary and see if you can find someone that actually got it to work with FreeNAS/FreeBSD before you buy one.

 

[gpsguy]

Sorry about my comment. I *assumed* you were buying something new ... so many threads reference NewEgg pricing, that my assumption was this was too good to be true.

Are the goods, hot?

 

[Raident]

I've read about those. They might work well as a FreeNAS server. Not sure if they are fully FreeBSD compatible though. Notice that FreeBSD is not listed on the supported OSes. I'd be a little wary and see if you can find someone that actually got it to work with FreeNAS/FreeBSD before you buy one.

Good point. Which vendors test/certify their hardware for compatibility with FreeBSD? Dell doesn't really even acknowledge FreeBSD's existence.

 

[cyberjock]

It's not vendor specific. It's model specific. Generally, the best advice is to find a model someone else has used and found to work and go with one of those. Or build one based on what other users are recommending.