noob questions

[ixidor]

i am thinking about building a homebrew nas box. i am looking to house something like 16-24 drives. i have a few questions, how freenas might be better.
1. does freenas use/prefer its on 'software' raid implementation, or could i use 'real' raid like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816401184 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816401188
2. what sort of read/write speeds could i expect from an 8 drive array, gb nic?
3. if freenas prefers its own software raid could i use host-bus-adapters, like in the 22 Drive Beast (rackmount) http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7998.msg113244#msg113244

 

[matthewowen01]

you want to use ZFS to setup your 'raid' ignore any hardware raid, ZFS will do it better. you can still use that controller, i think its the cheapest $ to port I've seen.

you can expect gigabit as long as your CPU can handle it. my 8 drive raidz2 gets a few hundred MB/s in and out.

you can use any controller that FreeNAS supports, from a bunch of PCI cards (don't recommend) to high end things like the one you showed above.

i would recommend Norco for a case, they have some great 4U server cases with 20 hotswap bays in the front and a few with 24 apparently (i have a 20, just saw the 24's when i looked.)