Looking for advice on completing my new FreeNAS build considering FreeNAS on top of ESXi

[Tronmech]

What is the deal with so many people wanting those tiny system boards. I wish nobody ever came up the the idea for those. They are crippled out of the box with no room for adding the hardware you need to make a full system.

If you absolutely need a compact system, and can deal with the tradeoffs (you can have lots of I/O, or lots of memory, or a speedy CPU, etc.) Why not? As I'm finding, they aren't cheap, and ECC sodimms are quite rare. Ramping costs further.

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[Chris Moore]

If you absolutely need a compact system, and can deal with the tradeoffs

I don't get that. Why do you 'need' a small system? I would rather throw my sofa on the curb to make room for a large system than suffer any tradeoffs.

and ECC sodimms are quite rare. Ramping costs further.

That too. I saved over $200 on my last build because I used DDR3 Registered ECC modules instead of something that is "quite rare" and expensive.
Full sized ATX system board 8 core Xeon E5 CPU and 64GB of registered ECC memory all for under $600.

 

[Tronmech]

I don't get that. Why do you 'need' a small system? I would rather throw my sofa on the curb to make room for a large system than suffer any tradeoffs.

Size and power consumption. For 1u builds, having the space for drives, power, etc can matter.

That too. I saved over $200 on my last build because I used DDR3 Registered ECC modules instead of something that is "quite rare" and expensive.
Full sized ATX system board 8 core Xeon E5 CPU and 64GB of registered ECC memory all for under $600.

I'm looking at micro or full atx now because worst case I can reuse an old case currently in use as a footrest and migrate to a better case later. And every penny counts...

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[Chris Moore]

You might want to consider something like this. It will fit in a "standard" ATX mid tower like a Fractal Design Define R5.

Supermicro X9SRL-F ATX Motherboard LGA2011 IPMI w/ Heat Sink & I/O Shield
https://www.ebay.com/itm/113216257183
Price: US $189.98

The board supports up to 512GB of RAM.

SAMSUNG 16GB PC3L-12800R DDR3-1600 ECC Registered 1.35V RDIMM
https://www.ebay.com/itm/302606459277
Price: US $44.95 x 4 64GB of RAM with room for another 64 without going to the larger modules.

You can stay with the included fan or get this larger one. I use this model on two of my systems. It is only slightly louder than the Noctua cooler I have on my wife's computer.

Dynatron R27 Side Fan CPU Cooler 3U for Intel Socket LGA2011 (Narrow ILM)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/401284811045
Price: US $39.59

You have a lot of options for CPUs to go in this board, but I recently bought one of these for my system:

Intel Xeon E5-2650 V2 2.6GHz 8-CORE 20MB Cache CPU PROCESSOR SR1A8
https://www.ebay.com/itm/222870480347
Price: US $99.99

Only it was $40 more when I bought it... It works great. Plenty of resources for all the things I am doing.

If you want more, you can get a 10 core model like this:

Intel Xeon Processor E5-2680V2, SR1A6 10-Core 2.80GHz 25MB LGA-2011
https://www.ebay.com/itm/113224096017
Price: US $169.00 - I have one of these also, but the price on these has gone up about $40 since I bought mine.

For the drive controller, I would suggest a SAS controller, there are 4 SCA ports on the system board in addition to the SATA ports, but you will be better off with SAS.

SAS PCI-E 3.0 HBA LSI 9207-8i P20 IT Mode for ZFS FreeNAS unRAID
https://www.ebay.com/itm/162862201664
Price: US $69.55

Set of cables to connect the SAS controller to SATA drives:

Lot of 2 Mini SAS to 4-SATA SFF-8087 Multi-Lane Forward Breakout Internal Cable
https://www.ebay.com/itm/371681252206
Price: US $12.99

I would suggest one of these for the boot drive. It will last as long as the server, if not longer:

Intel 320 SERIES SSD 40GB SATA 2 2.5 Hard Drive SSDSA2CT040G3
https://www.ebay.com/itm/183347748896
Price: US $18.99

Not much more than a USB flash drive, but so much more reliable.