Is HP ProLiant N36L ok for FreeNas 8 or I need to build my own box?

[johngalt]

Many years ago, I bought a Synology 4-bay CS 407. It ran fine for a while, but for the last year or so, it became to misbehave. Every few weeks, the volume would get corrupted and it would report a bad hard drive. Checking out the hard drive, I would find that they are fine. Finally, I had to dump it.

I am ready to jump for an open source solution, i.e., FreeNas 8, and need to get right hardware for it now. I have been reading threads here, and found people recommending HP ProLiant N36L microserver. I need at least 4TB capacity available with redundancy. Does the HP server run FreeNas 8 fine without any issues?

If there are any limitations, I would like to build my own FreeNas box. In that case, I would love to get some recommendations. I don't have a lot of time to research parts and components on my own -- it was fun when I had more time, but not anymore. So, I would go by your recommendations. The only major constraints are size (smaller wanted) and that it should not be too pricey. This will be used at home mostly for taking backup of data from at most 2-3 windows 7 machines on samba/CIFS.

 

[kesh]

Hi John,

I don't (at least not yet) have any first hand knowledge, but I can repost the MicroServer-FreeNAS links that another poster (survive) posted in my old thread earlier (in case you missed them):

http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?32-Freenas-8-on-Hp-Microsvr-Nl361
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1555868

 

[mlanner]

John,

I installed FN8 on an HP MicroServer (N36L) using a Patriot 8GB USB stick and 4x 1TB drives. I also upgraded the box to 8GB RAM. It's only a few days old at this point. So far so good, though.

 

[johngalt]

Hi John,

I don't (at least not yet) have any first hand knowledge, but I can repost the MicroServer-FreeNAS links that another poster (survive) posted in my old thread earlier (in case you missed them):

http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?32-Freenas-8-on-Hp-Microsvr-Nl361
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1555868

kesh, thank you for posting those two thread links. I had already read through the first one, but it will take me time to read through the second one -- that one is more than 18 pages long!

 

[johngalt]

Mlanner, thank you for that confirmation. I am very pleased to know that it works fine. I hope that the samba performance is good. All I am looking to do with this NAS is to take automated back ups from my windows 7 machines to it on network.

John,

I installed FN8 on an HP MicroServer (N36L) using a Patriot 8GB USB stick and 4x 1TB drives. I also upgraded the box to 8GB RAM. It's only a few days old at this point. So far so good, though.